


Space Junk

by AthenaThoth



Category: Loki/Tom Hiddleston - Fandom, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, F/M, Fluff, It's the future, Loki Falls In Love, Marvel Universe, Oral Sex, Porn With Plot, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Science Fiction, Smut, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, loki (Marvel)/original female character - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-11-15
Packaged: 2019-07-28 17:32:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 21,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16246460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AthenaThoth/pseuds/AthenaThoth
Summary: More than five-hundred years after the events of Avengers: Infinity War, Captain Dana Kellan rescues Loki from the wreckage of the ship where he was "killed" by Thanos. A freak accident damages her spacecraft and strands them on a nearby planetoid. She knows she shouldn't be attracted to an alien she knows nothing about. There's just one problem with that: Dana has been alone in space for eight years, and Loki is very, very pretty.





	1. I Met a Traveler from an Antique Land

He floated in darkness. There was no light, no sound, no warmth.

No time.

Adrift among the stars, he dreamlessly slumbered, motionless but for the subtle shifts of currents in the solar wind. Slowly, as he floated, his burns were healed. His broken pieces sewed themselves back together, bones knitting, tissue mending, structures within him functioning again. He waited.

And waited.

 

Beep-beep-beep. Beep-beep-beep.

“Wha? Oh for fuck’s sake.”

Beep-bee—

Kellan’s hand slammed against the console, stopping the proximity warning. Her eyes slid across the scanners, searching for the source of the disturbance.

“What do we have out here today? Let’s see. Oh, fan- _tas-_ tic. Space junk. I just loooooove space junk.” She rolled her eyes. “What kind of space junk do we have? Lovely, beautiful wreckage. Looks like a frigate that’s been destroyed and floating here for who knows how long.”

Her head hurt, probably from all the synthetic wine she’d imbibed before passing out in her pilot’s chair.

“Ripley, do a deep scan of the crap out there. Anything of salvageable value? Also, replicate me a damned aspirin.”

A voice answered from the ship’s speakers. It was a female voice, synthetic, but pretty good considering how old it was. It cracked occasionally, and slurred when power was low, but otherwise, it was a dependable voice output. Her ship, the Ozymandias, was a G-class search and salvage rig, and they didn’t usually have a synth comm this good. Kellan had salvaged Ripley from a broken craft she’d found floating near Broi a dozen years ago and installed it in the Oz. It wasn’t much, but it beat talking to herself and hearing nothing back.

“Scanning. Ship serial number 9281XOTWH7-A. Ship registered on Sakaar. Owner name, Baltar Nemo.”

“Are you fucking with me, Ripley? Captain Nemo’s ship? I suppose it’s called the Nautilus.”

“Ship is unnamed. Serial number only. Processing. ‘To fuck with—Terran idiom indicating a practical joke, lie, or other deception.’ Negative, Captain Kellan. I am not equipped to formulate or interpret practical jokes, lies, or other deceptions.”

“You’re tellin’ me you hunk of diodes,” Kellan muttered under her breath.

“I’m sorry, Captain. Your last order was unclear. Please repeat?”

“No order. Cancel.”

She closed her eyes and waited for the computer to complete the scan of the wreckage outside. If she was lucky, she could sleep a little more before—

“Scan complete. Possible salvageable items: approximately three tonnes base metals; approximately seven tonnes plastiform; three-hundred-twenty-nine substantially intact frozen alien bodies—deceased, all genders, origins: Sakaar, Rebulon, Kronan, Asgard; one frozen alien body—living, male, origin: Jotunheim; approximately sixty meters of electrical conduit; one intact thermocoupler; seven—”

Kellan’s eyes flew open. Did Ripley say…

“Ripley. Did you say ‘one frozen alien body, LIVING??”

“Affirmative, Captain. A male Jotun.”

“Jotun? You’re telling me there’s a _frost giant_ out there, and it’s alive? Where is it? Is there an intact pod I can’t see on the scanners?”

“Negative, Captain. The Jotun is floating in free space among the wreckage.”

How in the hell could a living thing, even a fucking frost giant, survive the cold of deep space? Maybe the ship had just been destroyed right before she arrived. Jotuns were supposed to be tough, at least in all the legends she’d read. They weren’t supposed to exist, though. The last of them had died with the destruction of their planet. Or so she had been taught. Could one survive in space for minutes? Hours? Days? If it hadn’t been out there long, the thing, or things, that destroyed that ship might still be around.

“Ripley, calculate estimated time since ship’s destruction, and possible cause.”

“Processing. The frigate 9281XOTWH7-A was destroyed by at least three pulses from a high-energy weapon with a signature matching a Titan ship’s guns. Approximate date of destruction 2018.”

“Twenty— you mean the Terran year two thousand eighteen?” she shrieked.

“Affirmative, Captain.”

A live Jotun. Floating in space for five hundred and thirty six years. She rushed to get into her hard suit.

“I’m going out. Hold the salvage bots until I check out the alien.”

 

“Ripley? Are you sure this is a Jotun? It looks...Terran, or something like it. What can you tell me about him?”

The computer’s voice came through her helmet comm as she examined the frozen body where it floated.

“Scanning. Affirmative. Being is Jotun. Being is cloaked with a molecular energy field making it appear Asgardian. Being is male. Being is approximately 1,790 Terran years old.”

“Shiiiit. He looks pretty good for pushing eighteen-hundred.”

Kellan examined the body. He had long black hair, unkempt. His skin was pale, like the sand on the Rec-Deck. Tall, probably 1.8 or 1.9 meters. Incredibly lean—starved, actually. And his face…

“Ripley, either I’ve been alone on this ship for too damned long, or this guy is hot.”

“The Jotun’s body’s temperature is 4.6 degrees Kelvin, Captain. That is classified as ‘very cold.’ Processing. ‘Hot—idiom used to describe sexual attractiveness.’”

Kellan sighed. Fucking computer.

“I’m hauling him in. He’ll be too heavy for me to lift once we get into gee. Can you open the airlock next to the medbay and prep one of the medi-stretchers?”

“Affirmative, Captain.”

She got a firm grip on the Jotun’s ankle and pulsed her boot thrusters a few times. Once she was heading toward the airlock, there was nothing to do but wait for inertia to drag her along. A classic rookie mistake in spacewalk was to get impatient and overuse the thrusters, either shooting way off course, or running out of fuel and being stranded in deep space. Kellan knew better. She had been born on a ship very like the Ozymandias, and had spent more of her life on ships in deep space than on planets.

In the airlock, she maneuvered the Jotun’s body so it floated above the medi-stretcher, then pushed him down against the surface and strapped him in. She hit the button to close the airlock and repressurize, holding onto a handlebar with one hand and the medi-stretcher with the other, so it didn’t shift during the repressurization and fall over. Then, more waiting.

Sometimes, that’s all living in space was. Waiting, sleeping, eating, shitting, playing solitaire, reading, waiting some more. She’d seen crewmen go mad from it. That was one reason she was salvaging alone these days. Her last crew...well, it wasn’t pretty.

“Repressurization complete. Safe to remove hard suit.”

With a sigh of relief she opened the releases on her helmet and pulled it off, taking a deep breath. Ship air wasn’t as good as real air on a planet with atmo, but it was a damned sight better than canned air in a hard suit that stank of body odor and filter carbon. She looked to the Jotun. He was stiff, which was not unreasonable, being that his body was still negative two-hundred-and-sixty-something Celsius.

“Ripley go ahead and send the bots out. Priority on goods of greatest economic value first. Photoscan and DNA the bodies of the aliens. They probably don’t have any living relatives, but I’ll send them to the database anyway. They may have descendants.”

“Affirmative, Captain. Salvage reclamation drones have been deployed.”

Now. To get her new frost giant friend to the medbay. She looked at his face again as she rolled him down the corridor. Definitely hot.


	2. Salvage

It took three weeks for the Jotun to thaw. Kellan probably could have warmed him faster, but the medlab’s databank had nothing even vaguely comparable to this situation, so she figured better safe than sorry. She didn’t want to damage his cells. As he warmed up, his skin got a twinge more pink, but not much. He was still the pale white of a body that hadn’t seen sunlight in a very long time. That wouldn’t be a problem though, if he woke and she could get him into the Rec-Deck for some artificial sunlight. What worried her more was his body.

She had stripped what remained of his clothing off as soon as she dared remove it from his skin without risking harm to him where the shredded cloth and leather had frozen to him, leaving him in nothing but an undergarment. Underneath his clothing, his body was painfully thin, ribs showing, abdomen hollowed. The med-bed turned him a few times a day to prevent bedsores, and the first time it had put him onto his stomach she had seen his spine, vertebrae poking up under his skin like a long, narrow mountain range. The med-bed had hooked him up to an intravenous line as soon as she put him into it, so she knew it was steadily supplying him with nourishment. Over the weeks, while he thawed, she saw his body start to fill out, the hollow places in his cheeks and elsewhere becoming less pronounced. On the last turn, when he had been face-down, his back had looked almost normal, albeit still very thin. Now, the bed had turned him on his side, facing her. 

When he reached -10C, his chest suddenly heaved as he drew in a breath. Kellan had been sipping her kava and watching him, and his abrupt movement startled her so badly she dropped her ‘World’s Greatest Elephant Trainer’ mug, which shattered into about a million pieces.

“Awww man! I liked that mug.”

The cleanbots came scurrying out of their hidey-holes in the baseboards to clean up the mess. She loved watching them. It was almost worth making a mess just to see them, their tiny rodent-like forms dancing around the spill, ingesting the ceramic  _ and _ the kava without seeming to care which was which. She had found the mug in a salvage she’d done on a pleasure craft a dozen years ago. It was rare to see items made of glass. Most things that weren't made of metal were made of plastiform. Either this one was a family heirloom from Old Terra or it was some rich bastard’s idea of a funny joke.

Mesmerized by the cleanbots, she didn’t notice that the Jotun had moved slightly until a second movement, more pronounced than his first, caught her eye.

“Oh hey, uh. Buddy? Jotun guy? Um. I don’t know what to call you. You’re ok. Well, you’re going to be ok. I think. Maybe. At least I hope so. You’re on a ship. I pulled you out of deep space. I don’t even know how you survived out there, but, uh, you’re on my ship now and...and…”

The intensity of his gaze was unnerving.

“Do you even understand Terran? Maybe… ‘Kerak lar fvhal, uh, sha...shana, fuck I can’t remember how to say—nevermind you probably don’t speak Darbian anyway.”

She lapsed into apprehensive silence. After what seemed like an hour, the Jotun blinked and his mouth opened a little. A hiss of air came out. Was he having trouble breathing still? Or…

“Do you need water? Yeah. Water. You’re probably dehydrated as hell. The intravenous feed probably took care of your body, but your mouth hasn’t been unfrozen for a long time.”

She got a cup of water from the reclaimer and brought it to him. 

“Let’s see. You won’t be able to drink this laying down, and I’ll bet you’re still too weak to sit up. How about…”

Kellan took a handcloth from the storage cupboard above him and dipped it into the water. She touched it to his lips and he drew back sharply. 

“Ok, I guess you don’t want any…”

His eyes were full of fear.

“Oh! I’m sorry. I’m not going to hurt you. You’re safe here. This is water. It’s...look, watch me.”

She dipped the rag into the water again and put it into her mouth, sucking the water out of the cloth. He watched her carefully.

“See? It’s just water. You know, that liquid shit carbon-based lifeforms kinda have to have for survival? Let’s try this again, okay?”

She dipped the rag and held it carefully to his lips once more. This time, keeping his eyes on her, he closed his mouth around the rag. After a moment, he opened it again. She dipped the rag and repeated. When the cup was empty, she refilled it. 

“You need more? Oh, yeah. You don’t even know what I’m saying.”

She motioned at the cup, then mimed sucking on the rag, then pointed at him.

“I...speak...Midgardian,” he said.

His voice was scratchy and breathy, unsurprising after being frozen for so long. 

“Okay! Now we’re getting somewhere. I don’t know what Mig-darian or whatever you said is, but I’m glad you can understand me.”

“Where? How?” he rasped, looking around the room.

“You’re on my ship, the Ozymandias. I’m Captain Kellan. This is a salvage vehicle, freelance. We’re in deep space, about an eighth of a parsec outside of the Tau Ceti system. This ship only has an LST drive, not an FTL drive so we won’t get there for another 112 Terran days, give or take a day. That’s the where. How? I’ve been out on a salvage run for the last eight Terran years. I’m not sure how you got out there, though. It looks like you were on a freighter, but, uh. Well, I don’t know how to tell you this. It kinda got destroyed by blast guns from a Titan vessel. You were free floating in the wreckage, and I brought you on my ship.”

“Thor?”

“What? What’s a thor? Do you mean you’re sore? I’ll bet you are after being frozen for so long. As soon as you are stable, we’ll get you onto the Rec-Deck for physical therapy and—”

“No. _ Thor. _ Asgardian male. Big. One eye.”

“Oh, it’s a name! Um. I suppose maybe someone left the wreckage before I got here. It was out there a long time, but...there isn’t...you’re the only one out there who wasn’t...dead.”

Kellan watched as the light in the Jotun’s blue-green eyes dulled. He closed his eyes and made a small noise that might have been a sob. 

After a while, he touched his eyes with one thin hand. 

“Cry? Why not?” he asked.

“I don’t...oh. You’re sad and you feel like crying, but you can’t? Dehydration. Your body probably can’t make tears right now. I’m sorry. Is Thor...was that your boyfriend?”

His eyelids flew open and his mouth contracted into a grimace of disgust.

“Brother.”

“Oh. Uh. Sorry,” she said awkwardly. “Do you have a name? I mean, I’m sure you have a name, but what is it? If you don’t mind telling me. I can keep calling you ‘Jotun guy’ but—”

“Loki.”

“Low-key? What kinda name is that? You a stim dealer or something? Or just a really relaxed kinda guy who keeps it ‘low-key,’” she laughed. His face was solemn in response as her attempt to joke fell flat.

“Ell. Oh. Kay. Eye. Loki,” he said. 

“Great. Loki. Good to meet you. And I’m Kellan. Except I already told you that.”

Kellan stopped, painfully aware how awkward she was being.  _ Great,  _ she thought.  _ First other living being I’ve seen in eight years and I’m a babbling idiot. It’s bad enough he’s male and I haven’t been laid in more than a decade. He could have a face like a sack of loose brick and I’d still be interested, but he has to be fucking beautiful, too? And tragic? My fuckin’ luck. _

“Hey, I’m going to let you get some sleep now, and I’ll be back in—”

He had reached out and grabbed her arm, showing both more speed and more strength than she thought he could possibly have in his condition.

“Don’t,” he said. His eyes had grown fearful again. “Don’t leave.”

She took his hand off her arm and held it in hers. It was ice cold. She pulled her chair over next to the med-bed with the hand he wasn’t holding and sat next to him. He kept his eyes open and on her for a long time before he succumbed to sleep.


	3. Physical Therapy

Loki was healing faster than was natural. The medbay kept recalibrating every few hours, adjusting its actions to the increased speed of his healing. He slept often, but he woke from nightmares nearly every time he did. The only thing that seemed to keep his nightmares at bay was Kellan’s presence, so she set up a cot in the medbay, only leaving to go to the head or program something she couldn’t do remotely by voice command. Luckily, it didn’t have to be physical touch that calmed him. Her proximity was enough, so once he was stable enough to leave the med-bed, she moved him into her cabin. The crew’s quarters wouldn’t have done, even if she was shy about sharing a bed with him. Hers was the only room with a big enough bed that he wouldn’t be horribly uncomfortable.

She was tired of sleeping clothed, though. It was her regular habit to sleep nude, so she didn’t even own any nightwear. She improvised, taking her bra off and wearing a loose t-shirt and lounge pants to bed. The first night, she had arrived in the room in this ensemble, having changed in the head, only to find him completely unclothed and in bed already. She laid down and put her back to him, listening to his breathing in the darkness.

In the morning, she woke to feel something hard pressing into her back. Without being completely alert, she thought she must have fallen asleep with an empty wine bottle again, so she reached behind her to move it. When her hand made contact, she felt around it, trying to move it away, but it seemed to be joined to something larger, and wouldn’t budge even though she was pulling and pushing it. Awareness seeped into her brain and she jolted awake, pulling her hand away and turning quickly to look at him. He was sleeping soundly.

Curious to see the thing she’d just been holding, she lifted the blankets gently, keeping a close watch on his face to see if he was waking.

_Oh damn._

She climbed out of bed quickly and hit the showers, turning the setting to the coldest she could stand. Even so, she couldn’t get the sight of him out of her mind. Her hand wandered down her body and she began to stroke herself. His body wasn’t healed completely, not by a long shot, but that didn’t seem to have affected his cock. It was big, and beautiful, and the skin on it was softer than anything she had touched in years, and—

“Captain? I will obtain breakfast for us from the replication machine. Would you like something specific?”

“Um. Just kava and toast, thanks.”

She heard him shuffle away and finished washing herself, the burning desire in her core having been replaced by fear of discovery and quelled for the time being.

The first week out of the med-bed, Loki had a rigorous schedule of rehabilitative therapy. In the mornings, after they ate breakfast, she helped him with whatever exercise the medbay suggested based on his current vitals. He still tired easily, so in the midday he napped. His nightmares seemed less potent at that time, probably because it wasn’t fully dark. The Oz was equipped with a state-of-the-art enviro-unit (also salvaged) that mimicked the sun patterns of whatever planet it was set to. She had it set to NuTerra, which meant that the lights came gradually on from 06:00 to 07:00 every day and dimmed from 19:00 to 20:00. 24 hour clock. 14 hours of sun, 10 of dark. She would have liked to have adjusted it to always be sun for him, to help with the nightmares, but she’d seen what happened to humans who tried to interrupt their diurnal natures. The salvage that had given her the ‘World’s Best Elephant Trainer’ mug was a small yacht where the occupants had set the sun to dark all hours, and had turned their Rec-Deck into a dance club. Between the constant darkness and the strobe lights, and likely a lot of booze and synthetic stims, the party had descended into a kind of madness, eventually culminating in a mass murder-suicide. She’d salvaged the galley and the cargo bay, but the rest… Kellan shuddered at the memory of blood and...bits of people. Besides the possible danger to herself and him if _she_ went mad, not knowing anything about Jotun physiology, she didn’t want to risk doing anything unusual that might cause _him_ harm.

In the afternoons, when he had recovered from the morning’s exertions, he insisted on doing another round of exercises.

“Why are you pushing yourself so hard? You’ve got plenty of time to recover,” Kellan said.

“I can’t stand the idea of being so...frail. It’s disgusting. I’m nearly as weak as a mortal.”

“I’ll try to not be offended by that. Besides, since you’re weak right now, shouldn’t you be a little more tolerant? You’re the same as me now.”

“Your weak mortal flesh is something you are born with. It is an affliction that has been thrust upon me. It is very much not the same thing.”

Kellan rolled her eyes but said nothing.

He was able to walk normally by the end of the first week, instead of the shuffling gait that was all he could do in his first days. He was gaining weight rapidly, the liquid protein created by the replicator helping to build his muscles. His mind didn’t seem to have been affected at all by being frozen in deep space, but since she hadn’t known him before, she couldn’t be sure. He was generally polite to her, if a bit cold, and occasionally sarcastic. Since she often employed sarcasm herself, this didn’t bother her. At least he understood when she was being snarky, unlike Ripley.

In his second week after he had awakened, he began to ask her questions.

“What planet is this ship from?”

“All the salvage rigs are built in a factory at Outpost 7 just out of NuTerra.”

“That tells me nothing.”

“Ok. Well, you know Old Terra?”

“I do not. I know that ‘Terra’ was a name given to the planet I call Midgard by some of its mortal population. Later, they called it ‘Earth.’”

“Yeah, that’s Old Terra. Nobody calls it Earth anymore.”

“Why not?”

She stared at him in silence. It was so strange talking to someone who didn’t know anything about the past five hundred years.  
“You know what happened to it, right? To Earth?”

“No. We were on our way there when we were attacked by Th...by the Titan ship.”

He shuddered at the memory. She’d have to get him to talk about that later. It was bugging him, she could tell.

“Ok, well. The Infinity War happened. That was between a big purple bastard named Thanos and a group of old Earth heroes named the Avengers. Ever heard of them?”

His eyes flashed with...was it anger? Contempt? Or just interest?

“I’m familiar with ‘Earth’s mightiest heroes,’ as they styled themselves. Pompous, arrogant mortals, pretending to be gods.”

“Wow. Ok, that’s not how most people see them, but whatever. Well, they went to war with Thanos, and he defeated them. He used the infinity gauntlet to reduce the population of the entire universe by half, and he made ‘examples’ out of the Avengers so people would stop resisting his rule. But the Avengers who were left still fought back, so Thanos...well, he destroyed Earth. I mean, it was still there physically, but it was pretty much uninhabitable. Eventually, the Avengers recruited enough new enhanced that they defeated Thanos, but they couldn’t put the Earth back together, so they got everyone who survived onto ships that came to rescue them from other races, like the Xandarians and the Novites, and the survivors of Earth colonized other planets. It’s a long story. You should read the archive. Ripley can pull it up for you. I failed history, so I forget all the details. Anyway, the guy who designed this ship, Stark the Iron Man—”

“Stark? Stark designed _this_ ship?”

“Yeah. You’ve heard of him?”

Loki threw back his head and laughed. It was a pleasant noise, but it startled her. She’d never heard him laugh before, and it was a bit unsettling, since it clashed horribly with his normally cool demeanor.

“I have held Stark’s throat in my hands. I thought I should have killed him then, but I suppose since he built the ship that likely saved my life, I must now forgive him for being such a thorn in my side.”

“You _met_ Stark? Peter Stark?”

“Peter? No. Tony Stark.”

“Oh, wow! Tony Stark was his _dad_. After they defeated Thanos, Stark and his wife moved to Mars, which got colonized and renamed NuTerra. His son, Peter, who was born during the war, became the Iron Man. Uh. The Iron Man is a sort of king. President. Well, leader. I don’t know their political system that well. I’m not from there.”

“It fits that Stark would make his son a king. What about this ship? If he was a king, why did he bother designing a spacecraft?”

“Not just _a_ spacecraft. A bunch of them. Peter was an engineer, and he designed a whole line of space vessels for different purposes. The salvager series was one of the most common ones; millions were produced, which is great for me because when something breaks it’s easy to get spare parts. They’ve been in continuous production since the first ones rolled off the line in the 2060s, and they’ve only changed a little, because they were so well-designed in the first place. Stark and Clinton Banner designed two engines for spacecraft based on technology they’d found after defeating Thanos. Stuff he’d stolen from civilizations he wiped out, I think. One was the FTL—faster than light drive, the other was the LST—light speed travel drive. This ship has an LST, so it goes just a bit below the speed of light. All the Stark Industries ships were sent out with the mission to salvage reclaimable materials, and to look for the victims of space wrecks. When a salvager finds some, we scan the bodies and send the information to a database on NuTerra. If there are any relatives living, they get to have closure, to know what happened to the people they care about. Sometimes they don’t have living relatives, but they might have descendants. A lot of Captains don’t bother, but I feel like the mission is important, so I always scan.”

“I see. And you have done this to my ship? You have a record of this?”

“Yeah. I scanned all the bodies from your ship and sent them in, but we have the original in the ship’s databank.”

“You said some Captains ignore this mission. Why do you adhere to it?

“Like I said, it’s in the directive, and I have respect for that. I’ll show you the plaque. If somebody I cared about was missing, I’d want to know what happened to them.” _If I had anyone to care about_ , she thought.

Loki pondered this.

“I would like to look through the record of all the bodies. If I can find Thor among them, at least I will know for certain my brother’s fate.”

“Sure. We can go look right after lunch.”

He lapsed into silence again while he ate his protein pucks.

“So. This child of Stark. Is he a king still?”

“Uh. Well. No. Not for a long, long time.”

It suddenly occurred to her that Loki had never asked her what year it was. He realized the same thing at the same time she did, and his eyes narrowed with suspicion.

“How long was I floating in space? When are we?”

“You were out there for...um. For five hundred and thirty-six years. By the calendar of NuTerra, it’s the year 2554.”

His eyes widened.

“Which brings me to a question I’ve wanted to ask you for a long time now. How the hell did you survive? Is that a Jotun thing or…?”

“Magic.”

“Haha, magic. Right. No, seriously, how did you do it?”

He held his hand out in front of him, palm up. A ball of flame suddenly appeared there, spinning above his flesh.

“Magic.”

“Oh. I didn’t realize you were...an enhanced. Or whatever. That you had abilities. I guess I should have figured that out from the shape shifting, but I thought it was some kind of mechanical thing. I guess that also explains your rapid healing?”

He was nodding.

“I used the last energy I had to wrap myself in a protective barrier of seidr--magic, that is. It was only meant to stop Th— my attacker, from crushing my throat to the point of my death. I lost consciousness, and the barrier must have stayed intact, drawing from my body slowly over time to sustain itself. That and my ability to endure deep cold are what saved me. Now that I’m no longer using all my energy to maintain the seidr, my body’s natural ability to heal itself is able to function.”

There it was again. Twice now, he’d started to say a name. A name that began with Th. The person who attacked him. She dared to go out on a limb, hoping it didn’t erode all the rapport she had built with him.

“Did...was it your brother?”

“Was what my brother?”

“Who tried to kill you. You keep not saying the whole name, but it starts with ‘Th’. I thought it might be ‘Thor.’”

For a moment, she was frightened of him as something she could only suppose was murderous rage flashed across his face. Then, his expression softened and returned to the neutral coldness she had grown used to.

“No. I was trying to save my brother when I was attacked. By Thanos. Since you did not find Thor alive, I can only assume Thanos killed him once I was incapacitated.”

She sucked in her breath.

“I’m so sorry.”

He had finished his food.

“The database. I wish to see it now.”

 

After a half hour of careful scrutiny, Loki had determined that his brother was not among the dead.

“That’s good news, right? Maybe he got rescued before your ship got blown apart.”

“Or, perhaps Thanos took him, and tortured him for years, warping his mind and causing him more pain than he ever imagined was possible,” he said. He was staring over her head, into the distance.

“Do you think so? I mean, I know Thanos was supposed to be a really awful piece of shit, but would he do that? Just torture a guy for no reason?”

Loki gazed down at her.

“I assure you, he would.”

“Sorry. I hope that didn’t happen to your brother.”

She needed to change the subject. This was getting intense, and Loki looked like he wanted to murder something. Being that she was the only murderable thing within reach, that wasn’t something she wanted to encourage.

“Let me show you the plaque. It’s down here.”

At the end of the main corridor was a plaque molded in plastiform and welded to the bulkhead.

“Can you read Terran? It says ‘Let this ship serve as a beacon of hope to all who see her, and—’”

“I can read it. But apparently, you cannot read _this_.”

He stabbed his finger at the edge of the plaque.

“What? Those designs? They’re just some kind of decorative pattern framing the plaque.”

She looked up at him. Loki was smiling broadly, looking happy for the first time since she had found him.

“No. It’s not a pattern. It’s Asgardian. It’s a message. It says ‘Loki, I was rescued and returned to Earth. We defeated Thanos after a long battle. I realized that if I survived, you may have also. The son of Stark built these ships to search for you. The sun will shine on us again, brother.’”

Kellan’s mouth had dropped open into a large, silent ‘O’ of surprise. Loki was both smiling and crying. He had discarded his cold demeanor, which she now realized was just an act he was using to keep himself from becoming emotionally involved with anyone around him.

“My brother is alive.”

“Are you...it’s been a long time though. Could he _still_ be alive?”

Loki nodded.  

“If he was alive after they defeated Thanos, he is likely still alive now. Asgardians live many thousands of years unless killed.”

Loki pulled Kellan to his body for a hug. She sagged against his chest, listening to his heartbeat. How could he smell this good? His hands were moving across her back, and even that little, platonic touch was stimulating her. She couldn’t stop thinking about the curves and angles of his body, imagining how they would fit against hers if they were both unclothed. She could feel her folds growing moist at the thought. He drew in a deep breath through his nose, as if he scented something. Oh no. Could he smell her arousal? She looked up at him and he caught her face in his hands. He leaned down toward her, and their lips nearly met.

An impact to the ship’s hull sent both of them flying as a claxon began blaring over the loudspeakers. In a moment, the claxon was replaced with Ripley’s voice.

“Warning. Hull breach. Damage critical. Decks one and two destroyed. Decks three through seven damaged. Decks eight through ten weakened and possibly compromised.”

“Fuck! Fuckfuckfuck!” Kellan screamed.

She pulled herself to her feet and ran down the corridor as fast as she could. It was difficult because the impact had rolled the ship almost 90 degrees, so the wall was now the floor, and the wall was both curved and covered with wires and hoses. She looked back to see if Loki was injured and discovered he was right behind her.

“What is this?”

“Something hit the ship and knocked a big fucking hole in us, that’s what.”

“We are under attack?”

“I don’t think so. Ripley, any idea what hit us?”

“Affirmative, Captain. The Ozymandias has been struck by a C-type asteroid, approximately eight hundred meters in diameter.”

“You know what an asteroid is? Big fucking rock. Damnit. Fucking fucker asshole space rocks.”

They had reached the main cockpit. Once inside, Kellan tried to assess the damage.

“How badly damaged are we?” Loki asked.

“The undamaged parts of the hull are holding, for now, but that’s not our main problem. Fuel cells on the starboard side are gone entirely, and those on the port side are damaged and leaking.”

“What does that mean?”

She turned to face him, defeat on her face.

“It means we’ll never make it to Tau Ceti.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Infinity War spoilers (but seriously, if you haven't seen it yet, what are you doing reading smut on the internet instead of watching it???!?!?!)
> 
> Since A4 is not out yet as of this writing, I've chosen to ignore it entirely and I've written this as if the events of Infinity War were never satisfactorily resolved i.e. anyone "dead/dissolved" at the end of that was never restored after Thanos was defeated. Hence, Stark naming his son "Peter Steven Stark" in memoriam of Peter Parker, and in honor of his once-again friend Steve Rogers. Clinton Banner is, as you likely suspected, the son of Bruce Banner. Since Natasha can't, I imagine they used a surrogate. Pepper donated the egg, so CB and PS are 1/2 brothers, and both scientists/engineers, just like their dads. 
> 
> In the post-Thanos world, the entire universe was pretty happy with the Avengers, hence the Xandarians and other extraterrestrials coming to Earth/Old Terra to help the humans spread out among the stars and develop their technology. The people who colonized and terraformed NuTerra (Mars) insisted Tony Stark become their leader, since he had been the chief architect of the plan that defeated Thanos and freed the universe from the tyranny of the Mad Titan. Instead of being "King Anthony I" or some such, he preferred to just be called "The Iron Man," and thereafter, all the monarchs of NuTerra, even female ones, were known as The Iron Man.


	4. Hopper

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Smut ahead.

The lights went first. Ripley brought up the emergency running lights in the cockpit, where Kellan and Loki were, and turned all the rest off to save power. The life support had also been shut down on any portion of the ship other than the cockpit. Kellan was reading a screen.

“What is that?”

“It’s the auto-manifest.”

“What is an auto-manifest?”

“The ship automatically does an internal scan every three minutes and logs everything onboard. I’m looking through the latest to see if anything that we could use to help us is left. The lower decks that were wiped out are the biggest two parts of the cargo hold. Pretty much everything useful was in there. The upper decks mostly only have junk I didn’t want to throw out, but didn’t have an immediate use for.”

“Can we send some kind of distress signal?”

“Already did, but honestly, there’s no one out there to see it. We’re still…” she calculated in her head. “About nine-hundred and ninety thousand kilometers from Tau Ceti. Except for a few planetoids, there’s nothing between here and there.”

“No one to  _ see  _ it? Don’t you mean hear it?”

“What? No. Who would send a space signal using sound? Sound’s slow. Signals are sent in wavelength pulses. Like...Morse code with light. So, you know, it travels at the speed of light. If you sent a message with sound, and then took off in the same direction with an LST drive, you’d reach your destination long before your message did.” 

“What is Morse code?”

“It’s a signaling method from Old Terra.”

She shook her head impatiently, muttering to herself about the contents of the manifest.

“But what—”

“Loki! If you don’t let me read this and find something we can use to save our asses, I’m going to be dead and you’re going to have to float in space for another five hundred years. If that’s your goal, keep talkin’. Otherwise, please shut the hell up.”

Loki waited silently, his eyes boring holes into her skull.

“There’s nothing here. I mean, I’ve got a lot of junk, but...nothing useful.”

“Nothing?”

“Maybe this hopper pod. It’s not in good shape though. Won’t make it far. Definitely not to Tau Ceti. Ripley? Is there anything with atmo within distance of a hopper pod? Preferably with water and a food source, since the fuel cells on the Oz are going dead?”

“Scanning. Affirmative, Captain. There is an uninhabited planetary mass object within range that has a temperature spectrum habitable to humans, water in both liquid and solid forms, and native plant and animal life. There is no record of a survey in the available databases, and therefore it cannot be determined if the native flora and fauna are edible.”

“Better than freezing to death in space,” Kellan said. “Come on, let’s go.”

She walked to a control panel next to the cockpit door and pulled it open, detaching a small gold and red box from the wiring inside.

“What is that?” Loki asked.

“It’s Ripley. She’s a good synthcomm. I’m not losing her if I can help it. I’ll install her on my next ship.”

“You’re assuming you will someday  _ have _ another ship.”

“Hey, call me optimistic. I’ve gotten out of worse bullshit than this.”

She stopped in her cabin and grabbed two satchels, which she told Loki were her ‘go bags,’ but she shushed him when he started to ask her what a ‘go bag’ was. She made one more stop to pull from a wall compartment a square metal box about as wide as both of her hands, which she shoved into the emptier of the two satchels, with the Ripley module. They made their way up one deck, to Ten, the topmost deck of the ship. She had never brought Loki up here. Mostly because there wasn’t much to see. It was her junk room. About halfway down the cargo bay, Kellan stopped in front of a spherical object about a meter and a half in diameter.

“What is that?”

“That’s a hopper pod.”

“Why does it say ‘Edward’ on the side?”

“That’s its name.”

“Strange name for a space vessel.”

“What would you rather I’d named it? ‘Nighthawk’?”

“Why do you have it?”

“I got it because I was going to tinker with it, restore it, that kind of thing.”

“What do you intend to do with it now?”

“We’re going to get into it, and fly it to that planet Ripley found. Have you not been listening to anything that’s been going on?”

Kellan removed the restraining cables that were securing the hopper pod to the deck. She pulled the door open and gestured for Loki to climb inside.

“Shouldn’t you go first? You’re a lady.”

“Just get in there. You’re bigger than I am. I think we’ll both be more comfortable with me sitting on you than with you sitting on me. These pods are designed for one small person and a bit of luggage. We’re both going to have to squeeze into that space.”

“I see.”

Loki climbed into the small, spherical pod. It had clear plasti-form walls. Her grandmother had called pods like this ‘giant hamster balls,’ whatever a hamster was.  Kellan could see Loki arranging himself inside, trying to get his legs as straight as possible. The pod wasn’t designed for someone over 1.8 meters, so his knees were bent at a steep angle. He looked uncomfortable.

_ Well, here goes nothing. _

She climbed into the pod carefully, settling herself on Loki’s lap.

“I thought you would be facing the other direction,” he said.

Kellan was straddling his lap, facing him. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders for balance and settled herself as best she could. She was very aware that his crotch and hers were pressed up against one another. Even fully clothed, it thrilled her to think about it. She tried to think of something--anything--else.

“This is better. If I sat the other way, where would I put my legs? Yours are taking up that whole side of the pod. This way, I can lean my back against your legs and my legs don’t get in the way at all. Besides, the flight controls are here, behind your head. Normally, the seat swivels so the occupant can get to all the systems. This one has a seat that’s broken and doesn’t swivel any more. That’s probably why it was abandoned in the junkyard I found it in.”

She pulled the pod door shut and it sealed itself. 

“Computer, open cargo bay doors on deck 10.”

“Car-go bay-door o-pen-ing,” said a jerky, mechanical voice from somewhere outside the pod.

“What was that?” Loki asked.

“That’s what the ship sounds like when Ripley isn’t installed for the synthcomm. Now you see why I wanted to keep her. If I’d have had to listen to that for the last eight years I would have blown myself out of the airlock.”

The deck depressurized and the cargo bay doors cracked, letting in light from the nearest star system. When they were fully open, Kellan pushed a button above Loki’s head. Thrusters on the pod’s side kicked into action, pushing the pod along the deck floor a few meters. There was a terrible screeching noise until Kellan engaged the next thrusters, on the bottom of the pod. The sphere was aloft, floating in the gravityless space of the hold. She increased the thrusters from the side and the pod sailed out of the cargo hold and away from the ship. Once outside, she maneuvered the pod onto a trajectory that would take them to the nearby planetoid. Time for more waiting.

 

Kellan was being baked by warm sunshine. She opened her eyes and looked over at Loki, who sat on the beach with her. He leaned over her and pressed his lips to hers, pushing his tongue into her mouth. She submitted to his probing, as she never did with any other. She didn’t like men who were too aggressive in bed, but she needed him so badly. It had been so long since she’d felt the touch of another person. His mouth was like fire. Soon, she felt his hands on her folds, stroking and caressing her, and then his fingers were inside her. She moaned into his mouth as he began to pump his digits into her. It was almost unbearable how good it felt for him to touch her. He removed his fingers and she whined in protest, but he muttered “shhhhh” and she felt the head of his cock pressing against her, begging for entry. She spread her legs as wide as she could and he pushed inside her. He felt so good, she could barely stand it.   
“Loki, Loki!” she moaned. 

There was a pressure on her back. It felt like hands. But how could it be? Her back was pressed against the warm sand as her lover pounded her into it.

Kellan opened her eyes. Dream. Just a dream. She was uncomfortable, bent into the cramped pod. Her head rested on Loki’s shoulder and she was breathing into his neck. Her nipples were so hard they ached where they pressed against his chest.

The pressure that had awakened her was Loki’s hands against her back. She pulled her torso back and looked at him. He was awake.

“I’m sorry I woke you,” he said softly.

“It’s fine,” she answered. “Did you get any sleep?”

“Yes. Were you dreaming?”

“Uh. A little.”

“What were you dreaming about?”

Her mind scrambled to come up with any answer other than the truth. She must have shown some outward sign that clued him in to the fact that she was dreaming. She needed a lie that would explain away whatever foolish thing she had done.

“I was...well, I was on a beach. Just, getting warm. From the sun. And uh. Then I went swimming.”

“Really.” 

It was a statement, not a question, and it held more than a twinge of disbelief.

“Really!” she said.

“I know when people are lying. That was a lie. Now, what were you dreaming about?”

His voice was deep, soft. Was there even any sense in lying?

“You.”

“Me what?” he asked in a tone either taunting or seductive. She couldn’t tell.

“We were...on a beach.”

“Mmmmm,” he murmured. One corner of his mouth twitched up in a smirk. He was rubbing her back lightly with his hands. She wanted to melt into them, and it was eliciting a response on her skin, and especially between her legs. She had a sudden urge to grind herself against him.

“What were we  _ doing _ on the beach?”

“You were fucking me.”

There. She had said it.  _ There goes a chance at  _ that _ friendship _ , she thought. Loki let out a deep, satisfied sigh.

“It’s not the first time you’ve dreamed of us, is it?”

“No.”

He chuckled. 

“Do you want to know how I know that?”

Kellan hazarded a guess. 

“Magic?”

“You talk in your sleep,” he said. “You wake me almost every night moaning my name.”

Kellan was horrified. He must hate her. 

“Are you angry with me?” she asked.

“Why would I be angry?”

She looked up and met his eyes. His pupils were wide with desire. 

“Oh.”

He leaned toward her and brushed his lips lightly across her mouth, teasingly. She stuck her tongue out a little and tasted his lips, and he pulled her against him, meeting her mouth with his. They couldn’t move very well, so for a long while, all they did was kiss one another, their fingers entwined in each others’ hair. The heat grew in her center. Her body was aching with need.

“I want you,” he said.

“There isn’t enough room to move. We’ll have to wait until we—”

“No.”

He waved his hand and they were suddenly both naked. 

“Magic,” he said, smiling when she gasped. 

Kellan could feel his cock, hard beneath her. It was laying along his stomach, her wetness pressed against it. Without the clothing to separate them, she pressed down against him and felt him nestle between her folds. She slid back and forth across him and he sucked in his breath and clutched her shoulders. He slid his hands down her body to her hips, pulling her up and forward. She helped him lift her hips as much as she could and he put the tip to her entrance. She pushed back down, slowly impaling herself on him with a moan. He was so long, it seemed to take forever for her to get to the bottom of his shaft. He lifted her most of the way off and then pulled her back down, his fingers digging into her hips. 

Loki took one of her hardened nipples into his mouth. He was ice cold, even inside, and she shrieked as the chill hit her, hardening her nipple even more. He was thrusting up into her at the same time he pulled her down, the force of their bodies together bruising her pelvis. She didn’t care. He was inside her, stretching her, and it felt so good. One of his hands snaked around to her front and dug between them, seeking her clit. When he found it, it only took a few strokes before she came, screaming his name.

Exhausted, she nearly collapsed against his chest, her arms hanging over his shoulders. He continued his thrusts for another few minutes before he came with a great cry. 

“Kellan, you are wonderful,” he murmured into her hair. 

“Mmmm. Takes one to know one. Er. Whatever. That didn’t really make sense. I’m…”

“You’re intoxicated from your orgasm. I understand.”

“Sorry. It’s been a long time for me.”

“It’s been a little longer for me,” he quipped, making both her and himself laugh. “Thank you, Kellan. I’ve wanted this a long time.”

“Me too. But, if we’re going to be intimate, you should probably start calling me Dana.”

“Dana?”

“It’s my name. Dana Kellan.”

“Kellan is your family name?”

“Yes. Do you have one? A surname, or, family name I mean?”

Loki was quiet for a few heartbeats. 

“Odinson,” he finally said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once I decided it was called a hopper pod, I realized I had to name it "Edward" in homage to Edward Hopper, the American painter. Among other works, he created the painting "Nighthawks" in 1942. It's one of my favorite paintings. When Kellan asks the rhetorical “What would you rather I’d named it? ‘Nighthawk’?” it's both a nod to the Hopper painting, and a Marvel reference. Nighthawk is a Marvel Comics character who made his first appearance in The Avengers #69, October 1969. Like Loki, Nighthawk was originally a supervillain who eventually became a hero. By 1974, Nighthawk had joined The Defenders (then made up of Dr. Strange, Hulk, Son of Satan, Namor, Luke Cage, and Valkyrie). He eventually crossed over into many Marvel books, including The Incredible Hulk, The Amazing Spider-Man, and Dr. Strange. Nighthawk was even featured in Mark Millar's 2006-07 mini-series Civil War. I know it's cheesy, but an Edward Hopper reference and a Marvel deep-dive in the same breath? I couldn't resist. 
> 
> As for Loki going back to the surname "Odinson," I didn't cry in the theater in IW until he said that. Then, of course, I bawled from there until the end of the film :)


	5. Planetoid

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More smut!
> 
> Thank you for all the feedback and kudos! I appreciate hearing from people, and it's awesome to know people are enjoying this story.

“Hey, Loki? Can you bring our clothes back from wherever you sent them?”

They had made love twice more, finding creative ways to pleasure each other in the cramped space inside the pod. Then, they had fallen asleep, wrapped around one another, until a soft beeping woke them as they approached the planet’s surface. Kellan was glad she had slept through the atmospheric entry. It always made her nervous.

“I can, but I enjoy you better like this,” he said seductively, nipping playfully at her neck.

“That’s great and all, but remember when Ripley said the planetoid we were going to had liquid  _ and  _ solid water? Well, unfortunately it looks like we will be landing on the solid part. There’s an ice field below us, and the pod doesn’t have enough fuel to navigate to a better landing place.  _ You _ may be able to survive sub-zero temperatures naked, but I assure you, my ‘weak mortal flesh,’ as you so tenderly called it, cannot.”

Their clothes appeared on them again, but hers seemed to be much thicker, more like cold-weather gear. 

“Great! You’re better than Weasel’s Emporium.”

“What is…”

“I’ll tell you later. Hang on.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck and adjusted the thrusters. There was just about enough juice left to brake their descent, so she began pulsing them to slow the pod. When they were about six meters from the ground, she dampened all the thrusters except those on the very bottom, slowing the pod as much as possible and cushioning their impact. Even so, the pod hit the icefield violently and rolled. Stuck inside as they were, with no room to move, she and Loki merely tumbled head over heels in each other’s arms until the pod rolled to a stop. 

Through the clear plastiform they could see a featureless ice plain stretching in all directions. The wind was blowing loose snow past them.

“Ok. First order of business is to find shelter. I’ve got an emergency shelter in the go bag, but it will be a lot easier to use if we find some kind of rocky outcropping or a big snowbank or...well, something to break the wind so the shelter doesn’t have to withstand all that.”

“A sheltered place. I understand.”

“Oh, shit.”

“What?”

She pointed to the door, which was on the bottom of the pod, dug into the icefield beneath them.

“We landed on the door, and it seems like it’s damaged. Even if we roll the pod over, we’re going to have to break it open, which is not going to be easy.”

“I can remove us, if that will help.”

“What do you mean?”

“Grasp everything you wish to keep from this pod, and hold tightly to me.”

She looped one strap from each bag over her shoulder and wrapped her arms around his neck. He wrapped his own arms around her body and she felt a sickening whoosh as they teleported outside of the pod. The wind was loud and they had to raise their voices to be heard.

“Oh holy shit. You can teleport too? Shapeshifting and teleporting, and you made a fire in your hand. How many different kinds of powers do you have?”

“Many,” he said.

He rose to his feet with her still in his arms and she lowered her legs to the ground. 

“Here,” she said, handing him one of the bags. “Which way do you think we should go?” 

He turned in a slow circle and scanned the horizon.

“That way,” he said. “There’s a cliff face. It may be ice, or it may be rock covered with ice. Either way, it should offer us some protection from this wind, unless it changes direction.”

“How can you see all—nevermind. Frost giant.”

He nodded. 

“I can’t move us the whole way at once, but I can move us in bursts. Hold tight to me.”

She adjusted the bag strap on her shoulder and stood next to him. He took her in his arms and pulled her close to him.

“Don’t move around.”

Before she could respond, he had made the first jump. Another followed a second later, and then another. She couldn’t see, being that her face was mostly pressed into his chest. After the sixth jump, she began to feel sick to her stomach. 

“How much longer?” she shouted.

“Three more,” he answered. “Are you alright?”

She nodded and he made the final three jumps. As soon as they stopped and he released her, she turned and emptied her stomach onto the frozen ground. When she finished retching, she grabbed a handful of snow and washed her mouth out as well as she could.

“Sorry, that was gross. I think my species isn’t supposed to teleport. At least, our stomachs aren’t.”

“You tolerated it very well, actually. I jumped with Thor when we were boys, and he vomited after every jump.”

“Huh. Maybe all those zero gee adventures in space walking did me some good after all,” she said. “Let’s move down a ways and closer to this wall.”

The wall in question was, as Loki had surmised, rock covered with ice. A few dozen meters down from where they had landed, they found a place where the rock had been undercut by scouring wind, creating a place where there was an overhang that was tall enough for Loki to stand up under.

Kellan opened one of the packs and dug around in it for a moment before she found what she was looking for. She pulled out a small package of black, semi-flexible material and unfolded it until it it formed a square. Flicking a tiny lever on one corner, she stepped back a pace as the pile of plastic began to move. It rose into the air and the walls moved outward, hidden ribs in the sides and corners stiffening, until it stopped moving. The structure was small, but it looked much sturdier than its previous configuration as a pile of unassuming plastic would have suggested. Kellan ran her hand down the center of the wall in front of her and it became a door, parting around her hand. She stepped inside, carrying the rest of the pack with her. Loki followed. Inside, the noise from the wind was considerably dampened.

“What magic created this?” he asked, examining the interior.

“Nanobots.” 

At his blank look, she elaborated.

“They’re tiny robots. Like ants, but smaller. Usually they’re no bigger than a micrometer. That’s one millionth of a meter. Anyway, the plastiform sheet I laid on the ground had nanobots inside, and when you activate them, they link up, becoming whatever they need to be. Some of them get hard, like this,” she tapped one of the rigid bones that formed the dwelling’s structure, “and some stay pliable, like the walls. That’s why I wanted a wall to put behind us. The bots can withstand a lot, but the less energy they have to expend on resisting things like wind, the longer they’ll last. They charge from solar power, but that means the easiest time for them to fail is also the worst possible moment: in the middle of the night, when they’re low power.”

“Amazing,” he said.

“The guy who can make fire and teleport thinks my nanobot camping tent is amazing. What a world.”

“Is it not supposed to be amazing?”

“No! They’re cheap survival structures that most people keep on their ships for emergencies but never use. Nanotech probably wasn’t around when you were...I mean, before you were in space for so long, so I get it that it seems fascinating to you, but it’s so much a part of the lives of anyone else living now that it just seems...commonplace.”

She took out several more things from the pack she had already opened. 

“This is a bedroll. Also nanobots. Set it up over there in the corner. Put the control lever on ‘2’.”

She handed him a small rectangle of the same pliant material the bottom of their shelter was made from, and he tried to mimic the actions she had taken with the tent. In a few moments, it had formed a low bed wide enough for both of them. He turned back to Kellan, who was pulling small foil packets out of the bag.

“We have eleven portions of high-energy rations. If we don’t expend a ridiculous amount of energy, that will last us about six days. By then, we should be able to get somewhere better than this. Preferably warmer.”

“Will that be possible? I can jump us to a greater distance than we can walk, but the corresponding energy drain on me will mean I’ll need more food and more time to recover my strength. It might be that any traveling distance lessened by the teleportation will only make us run short on rations sooner.”

“Yeah, that would be bad. Let’s stick to walking unless we have some reason not to. It’s getting dark and the temperature has dropped ten degrees since we landed. When it’s light again, I’ll use the scanner I brought to figure out the closest path to a non-frozen part of this rock.”

He was looking at her curiously. Not for the first time since he had awakened, Kellan felt unsettled by the intensity of his gaze.

“Uh, you hungry?” she asked, waving one of the foil packets at him.

“Not for that,” he said.

“Well, sorry to break it to ya, but we don’t have anyth—“

She broke off as his mouth closed on hers. 

He didn’t use magic to remove her clothes this time, peeling them from her sensually with his nimble fingers instead. She pulled off his shirt and ran her hands across his chest and over his shoulders, then worked his pants off over his hips. When both were nude, Loki gripped her buttocks and scooped her up in his arms, pulling her to his torso. Her legs spread as he did so and wrapped around his waist. He laid her on her back on the bed, then moved his mouth down her neck and started in on her shoulders.

“Wow you really move fast,” she said. “We’ve been here a total of twenty-five minutes and already you’ve gotten my pants off.”

“I have been alone for a long time,” he said between kisses.

“Yeah I guess half a millennium in space is probably the longest cold shower in history.”

He paused, looking up at her face.

“I was alone long before that,” he whispered. Then, he took her nipple into his mouth and she lost the ability to form coherent sentences for a time.

Loki worked his way down her body slowly. Kellan wrapped her arms around him and began exploring his body with her fingers. He stopped her, grabbing both her wrists in just one of his huge hands.

“No, little one. Let me do everything this time. You will have a chance later to do as you will with me.” 

He pushed her arms above her head.

“Leave your arms there,” he commanded in a gentle tone. “I am going to worship you, delight in you. I will give you pleasure unlike anything you have ever dreamed of.”

Breathlessly, she whimpered in response. The noise seemed to awaken something primal in him. He kissed and nipped his way down her ribs and across her stomach until he reached her mound. Pushing his arms under her thighs, he pulled her lower half open wide. She spread for him, lust clouding her features. Loki pressed his face between her legs, kissing her thighs and grazing her soft flesh with his teeth.  He parted her folds with his hands and began lapping at her sex as she threw her head back and cried out for him. He swirled his long tongue around her clit and she lifted her hips off the bed, pushing herself into his mouth. He brought her to the very brink and then retreated, over and over. Each time he stopped, an inarticulate cry of longing escaped from her.

“Loki, please quit teasing me?!”

He smiled up at her, his green eyes twinkling mischievously.

“Why so eager, little one? Have you no patience?”

“No. I need you. Now.”

“What do you need? Tell me.”

“I need you inside me. Please? I need you to fuck me, fill me with your--”

Before she finished her sentence, he was sliding into her. As his strokes filled her, he devoured her lips, her jaw, and her neck.

“Are you, ah, oh god, are you leaving marks on me?” she asked between moans of pleasure.

“Mmmmhmmmm,” he muttered. “I want to make sure every creature in the universe that we may encounter knows you are mine. I want  _ you _ to know you are mine.”

“Am I?”

He slowed his thrusts and looked deeply into her eyes.

“Are you not?” he asked very softly. His face was pleading, hopeful. 

A wave of heat washed over Kellan. She felt overwhelmed, like she was outside a ship without her suit, with the pressure of the vacuum of space ripping her apart.

“I...I am,” she said. It was the truth, but she didn’t know it until she said it out loud.

Loki’s face broke into a beautiful, blissful smile. He returned to nibbling on her neck and shoulders.

“You are mine,” he whispered into her hair. “You are mine. You are mine.”


	6. Snow far, snow good

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to sincerely thank all of you who are reading, and those who have left comments and kudos! It is amazing to see so much support for my little story. I wrote this chapter yesterday and I'm going to try to get three or four done quickly so I can post all next week. Keep comments coming in!

Kellan had begun to wonder if the light would ever return. 

Loki had made love to her so many times she had finally begged him to stop so she could rest. He relented after she threatened to refuse him sex the next time he was in the mood. Instead, he laid down next to her with his head on her chest like a child. His breathing was even and regular, and she had no doubt he was truly and deeply asleep. 

She wasn’t surprised he was tired. He wasn’t even fully healed yet. If the Oz hadn’t been struck by the asteroid, he should have had at least another few weeks of intense physical therapy and medical treatment. 

Sleep eluded her, so she lay in the darkness thinking over the events of the past few weeks. She’d found a strange alien floating in space, in a condition that should not have been survivable. Her only plan had been to rescue him, mostly out of curiosity to see one of the fabled frost giants of Jotunheim. But from the moment she had seen him, floating amongst the detritus of his mutilated ship, curled in the fetal position and thin as a skeleton, with tears frozen to his face, she had felt a great desire to comfort and protect him. That feeling had only grown stronger when he woke up and she saw how frightened and wary he was. Something terrible had happened to him, either when his ship had been destroyed, or before that. Or both. 

Kellan wasn’t a psychoanalyst by any stretch of the imagination, but she had seen many brands of madness, from simple biorhythmic disorders to complete psychotic breaks. Loki had all the signs of post-traumatic shock: the nightmares, the flashes of anger she saw in his eyes, his reluctance to talk about certain subjects, even his tendency to cling to her, once he identified her as an ally instead of a threat. If they could ever get off this rock and make it to somewhere civilized, she would get him better help than anything she and a standard medbay could provide. 

The second thing that occupied her thoughts was her feelings for him. When he had asked her if she was ‘his,’ her immediate instinct had been to say ‘hell no!’ She belonged to no one but herself. She was answerable to no one else, and accountable for her own actions. Her fierce independence was a point of pride for her. Then, her mouth had betrayed her, answering ‘yes’ instead. Had she really fallen so hard for this man that she had submitted herself to him so completely? 

Of course, Kellan had had lovers in the past, but she had never been ‘in love.’ She didn’t even believe she  _ could _ fall in love. The presence of the beautiful creature who currently laid next to her with his arms wrapped possessively around her body was threatening to prove that belief wrong. She threaded her fingers gently through his hair. Gods, he was gorgeous.

But what about _his_ feelings? He was acting like he cared about her, but, after all, she was the only woman he’d seen in five hundred years. Of  _ course _ he wanted to screw her senseless. What male, of any species, wouldn’t? She remembered something her grandmother had told her once; “For women, sex is optional. For men, it’s a biological imperative.” She found it hard to believe that this beautiful, intelligent, elegant man would be genuinely attracted to her if he had other options. She was coarse, tough, sarcastic, and certainly not pretty. 

That was when she decided she wouldn’t let herself fall in love with him. Amazing sex—and good lord was it amazing—wasn’t something to base a relationship on anyway. If she kept their relationship purely physical, and only extended emotional comfort to him on the basis that he needed it to heal from whatever trauma he was suffering the effects of, maybe she could stop herself from falling too deep. Then, when they reached somewhere with more people, and he found a woman he preferred over her, she wouldn’t get her heart ripped out. At least not entirely.

When the sun finally rose, Kellan hadn’t slept at all. Reluctantly, she woke Loki. His green eyes fluttered open and met hers, and he smiled.

“Good morrow, Dana.”

“Uh, hi. Sorry I had to wake you up, but we should move now that we have light. We had just under eleven hours of darkness. This planet must have a very slow rotation,” Kellan said. “Either that, or we’re a lot closer to the pole than I thought. After I survey I’ll have a better idea how many hours of light we’ll have before it gets dark again.”

They dressed and she retrieved the scanner. It was a metal rectangle about the width of her hands with an output screen on one side. She showed Loki how to use it.

“This is a multi-function scanner. It can’t do everything as well as specialized machines can, but it does a lot of stuff pretty well. For instance, if you have something you want to eat, but you’re not sure if it’s edible or poison, scan it. The readout will tell you whether it’s ok or not. But you’ll have to reprogram the settings for Jotun biology. It’s set to human right now. I’m not sure if there’s anything you can’t eat that we can, or vice versa. Right now, though, we’re going to use it to make a kind of map of where we are. It won’t be a great map, because we don’t have a satellite that’s attuned to the scanner that can gather data for us, but I can retrieve some information by bouncing the signal off the Oz’s receptor dishes. The ones that are left intact, anyway. They have minimal functionality when the ship doesn’t have power, but it’ll be enough for rough mapping. Let’s pack the rest of our stuff and we’ll get moving.”

The scan revealed that traveling northwest about thirty kilometers would bring them to an area with a much warmer temperature. Once the shelter and all their other belongings were safely stowed in the packs, they set out. He tried to carry both packs, but she argued with him that she wasn’t going to let him do all the work. She did agree to let him carry the heavier of the two packs, though. Kellan was stubborn, not stupid.

The scan had also revealed that the planet had, as she had surmised, a very slow period of rotation. They had roughly seventeen hours before the sun went down again. Traveling over the ice plain was easy at first. They weren't near the pole, just at a very high elevation that was colder than most of the rest of the planetoid. Where they had landed was very cold, and the ice was frozen solid and many feet thick. It was relatively even, and though covered with a light dusting of dry snow, it was cold enough that it wasn’t even slick. Three hours into their trek, Loki told her he could see a row of steep hills at the edge of his field of vision. If it had been clear, instead of constantly blustering with snow, he thought she would have been able to see it, even with her mortal eyes, which were not as strong as his. Their scanner revealed that they would have to cross these hills before the land sloped down to what looked like an ocean, and a warmer area.

Just over another three hours of travel brought them to the edge of the hilly terrain. It was then that Kellan began to have trouble. The snow was thicker here, and in places it had drifted many feet thick. Kellan found that out the hard way when she stepped too far to one side of her intended path and sank breast-deep into soft snow. Loki pulled her out easily, but from then on, he insisted on going first. He argued that even if he were to sink into a hidden drift as she had, his longer legs would mean he would sink much less deep in relation to his height, and he would be able to pull himself out with little effort. Kellan was too tired to fight him on it.

At eight hours, Kellan fell down into the snow. 

She had been growing warmer all day, but she attributed it to the exertion of their journey. Despite what she thought of herself, Kellan wasn’t at all fat, or out of shape. She exercised regularly on the Rec-Deck, because building and maintaining muscle tone was especially important in space where gravitational fluctuations and frequent spacewalks meant she often spent many hours in weightlessness. But no sleep, coupled with stress and the sheer exhaustion brought on by slogging through deep snow overwhelmed her. Halfway up the hill they were currently climbing, she suddenly felt dizzy and the world swam before her eyes. She didn’t even have time to call his name before she toppled over. 

 

Kellan woke on a beach. 

“Am I dreaming again?” she asked the air around her.

“Why would you think that?” 

She lifted her head and looked around. Loki was sitting next to her, lines of worry etched into his beautiful face.

“Last time I woke up on a beach, I was dreaming. It was the dream I had in the pod.”

“Ahhh, yes. The dream you had where I was...ahem...fucking you, I believe you said.”

“Yep. That one.” 

Kellan closed her eyes and smiled.

“How’d I get down here?”

“What is the last thing you remember?”

“I fell down. I tried to yell for you, because I was afraid you wouldn’t even notice I’d fallen, but I couldn’t seem to get my mouth to work and then everything just went wobbly.”

“I have excellent hearing. I picked you up and got you out of that snowy place as quickly as I could. I believe you simply exhausted yourself trying to keep up with me. I should have realized you wouldn’t be able to keep the same pace I could set. I am sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s not your fault. This isn’t my first adventure. I should have known better. I mean, I haven’t been stranded on a planetoid before, but I have been in snow. Once. On Centauri IV. Ever been there?”

“No.”

“It's a great place The Centaurians are humanoid, but they’re really tall. Seven feet or so. They also have the most beautiful skin. They’re just gorgeous.”

“What is so beautiful about their skin?”

“It’s blue. My favorite color.”

Loki was silent and Kellan nearly fell back asleep until she felt his hands on her legs.

“Tell me about the dream you had. The one about the beach?”

He was rubbing her calves and he moved down to her ankles and feet.

“Oh that feels amazing. Well, in my dream, you started kissing me, and then you used your hands, your fingers, I mean, to tease me. You had them inside me, and then you took your fingers out and replaced them with your cock. You were fucking me, hard. That’s when I woke up.”

“Hmm. Sounds like a nice dream.”

“Yes, it certainly was. What came after I woke up was nicer. You made our clothes disappear.”

She smiled as she remembered their first time together. 

“Disappear? Like this?”

She was suddenly naked and she opened her eyes to see that he was also. Loki was on his knees between her feet, his hard erection jutting proudly out ramrod straight.

“Yes, exactly like that,” she said. 

“And, I put my fingers inside you, like this?”

He opened her legs and slid two of his long digits into her, making her draw her breath in with a hiss.

“Oh my, darling. You are very, very wet. However did that happen?”

“Mmmm. Not sure. Maybe I was thinking about something like what you’re doing right now.”

Loki chuckled and curled his fingers inside her, pushing against her g-spot, making her gasp again. He put his thumb on her clit and made slow circles. Kellan writhed against him. How did he know exactly where and how to touch her? She’d never had a lover so attuned to her needs. It didn’t take long before pleasure exploded out of her center and washed over her, leaving her weak. 

He entered her and pulled her legs up onto his shoulders. His eyes were closed as he pumped into her, and his black hair fell into his face. She could feel another orgasm building and he brought her to the edge and then slowed his thrusts to a crawl to prolong her arousal. He was lifting her up with each thrust, hitting her insides in all the places she needed. 

“Come for me, my darling.”

His words triggered her release. She screamed his name and he increased the spread of his thrusts and quickly found his own pleasure.

Loki laid down next to her and pulled her into his arms. 

“I forgot how much I missed this,” he said.

“Sex?” she asked.

“That also,” he murmured.

“Also? If you didn’t mean sex, what did you mean? Loki? Loki?”

He had fallen asleep again. She sighed and nestled into him, reveling in the feeling of his body against hers.

 

They woke a few hours later. It was still light, but wouldn’t be for much longer. Loki brought their clothes back and they prepared to find a suitable place to erect their shelter. The beach was edged by trees, and they walked along the edge, looking for a stream or other fresh water source. Loki had filled their canteen with snow before he came down to the beach, but that wouldn’t last long. As they walked, Loki noticed Kellan was lost in thought.

“You seem distressed,” Loki said. “What troubles you?”

“The Oz. My ship. Yesterday, we were in imminent danger because the power was failing, and the life support and whatnot. I was running on adrenaline. I was completely focused on getting us somewhere with air so that when the ship’s systems failed we didn’t die. I didn’t have time to think about what was happening, just had to act on my knowledge of what to do in a crisis. But I couldn’t sleep last night, and I spent a lot of that time thinking about losing my ship. I’ve had her for almost sixteen years. And she’s just...gone.”

“You’ve been a ship captain for sixteen years? How old are you? You seem very young.”

“Thirty-five, actually.”

At his look of surprise, she laughed.

“It’s the fat. Pushes the wrinkles out.”

“Firstly, you are not fat. Secondly, I wasn’t surprised at how ‘old’ you are, but at how young you are. I forget Midgar--I mean, humans, are cursed with such short lifespans.”

“Oh. Yeah, I, uh. I know you’re like 1800 years old. Talk about a May-December relationship.”

“What is a May-December relationship?”

“When someone older and someone younger get together.”

“Ah. Like my mother and...Odin.”

“How much older was he?”

“Actually, Frigga was older than Odin. About nine hundred years older. That’s probably why she was so much more patient and wise and intelligent than he was.”

“You don’t seem to like your father much.”

“He’s not really my father. He took me from Jotunheim when I was an infant. I didn’t learn of my true parentage until recently. Or rather, recently before I was frozen in space.”

His voice was steady, but the set of his jaw when he spoke betrayed his anger. That would be another thing she would have to get him to talk about eventually. 

“You obtained your ship and became a Captain when you were nineteen, then?” 

“Yep.”

“How did you manage to get a ship of your own at such a young age? Or do I misunderstand something?”

“No, you’ve got it. It’s pretty rare for someone to get a ship of their own that young.”

“You still haven’t answered me. How did you get your ship?”

Kellan opened her mouth, but before she could tell him, a voice from the edge of the trees spoke.

“She bloody stole it, that’s how.”

They both turned to see a man holding a laser pistol aimed directly at them.

Kellan sighed.

“Well, fuck my life.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh oh! ;-) I wonder who that is...


	7. Roach

Before Kellan even realized what was happening, there was a dagger in each of Loki’s hands and he was beside the little man with the gun, one knife pressed to the interloper’s throat.

“No! Don’t kill him!” she yelled.

Loki’s eyes narrowed in confusion.

“You wish me to spare the life of a cretin who would threaten yours?”

The man with the pistol was frozen with fear, his eyes wide.

“Kell, tell your guy I’m ok. Honest, I’m not miffed about the Sunflower.”

“Sunflower? Her _name_ was the Ozymandias. Besides, of course you aren’t miffed. I may have taken her from you, but you stole her _first_. I don’t think it even counts as stealing if you steal something back from the bastard who stole it from your family in the first place.”

“Your Gran lost her. I won that ship, fair and square. Now come on, call off your thug.”

“Loki, it’s ok. I know this guy.”

Loki moved back to her side and the daggers disappeared.

The man was tiny, not even as tall as Kellan, and she was only about 1.5 meters, making Loki nearly one and half times his height. Long, greasy hair the color of old snow poked out from under a leather cap, but Kellan knew if he took it off he was bald as a baby’s ass on top. She’d never asked his age, but her Grandmother had known him since before Kellan was born.

“Jeez, Kell. I leave you alone for a few years and you start running with a tough crowd.”

The man holstered his pistol and gave Loki a withering look. Loki leaned forward menacingly and the man gulped and took a step back.

“A _few_ years? It’s been almost twenty.”

She turned to Loki.

“This is Roach,” Kellan said. “He and I used to run together. A very, _very_ long time ago.”

Loki stepped forward again, putting himself alarmingly close to the tiny man, who had to look up, and up to meet his eyes.

“I am Loki, Prince of Asgard, and rightful King of Jotunheim.”

“Oh, royalty!” the little man quipped. “Please! Kellan, at least introduce me properly. You know I never cared for that nickname. Resurrection Cochrane, Captain of the Starseeker, at your service, noble sir.”

He gave a little bow and then began laughing. At the sight of Loki’s face, which was turning rageful, he put his hands up in a gesture of surrender.

“Sorry, fella. I’m not making light of your situation. I’m sure you are royalty, and I don’t doubt that’s very important...to you. It’s just that it doesn’t mean much to the rest of us when you say you’re a prince of one dead planet and king of another. I’d be more impressed if you were a light-drive mechanic. At least that’s useful.”

Loki opened his mouth as if to say something. Kellan decided to divert the fight before it started.

“How’d you find us?” she asked.

“My scanner picked up the signal you sent. Imagine my surprise when I heard the ship’s name and serial over my synthcomm. Couldn’t believe it.”

“So...you went to the Oz and you patched in? Got the coords for the last place I looked at? Or what?”

“Yeah, basically. I’ve got a planiscanner. Full feature. Once I knew where you’d headed out for, I just scanned until I found you.”

“You bring a shuttle?”

“No, Kell. I flew down here with my own little angel wings.” Cochrane rolled his eyes. “I landed over there.” He gestured behind him, through the thick trees. “Do you want to come with me and get off this ball of dirt?”

“Nah,” Kellan said. “I think I’m going to stay. Build a summer home near the water.”

She laughed as she slung the strap of her bag back over her shoulder and trudged off in the direction Cochrane had indicated.

“After you, your Majesty,” Cochrane said.

“Oh no, please lead the way,” Loki said in a menacing tone. “I’ll be _right_ behind you.”

Cochrane swallowed audibly and set off through the woods, trying to catch up with Kellan.

 

Cochrane’s ship was not what Kellan expected. The Starseeker seemed to have all the best upgrades.

“I guess Roach is really moving up in the world.”

She was reclining on the berth in the stateroom Cochrane had said they could use, hands folded behind her head. Loki was in a chair on the other side of the room.

“In what way?”

“This is a fancy ship. Like...faaaaannnncyyyy. I’m going to assume you don’t know anything about starships built in the last fifteen years—”

“A reasonable assumption.”

“This is a Palladian-class sloop, and on top of that, it’s outfitted with all the latest equipment available. It’s got a dual-FTL drive, full synth everything—comms, replicators, reclamators. There’s even a deck on these type of ships where there’s a hydroponic garden. That means they’re growing _actual_ food for passengers to eat, not just harvesting reclaimed protein. Ships like this don’t go for under a hundred thousand grams of T. Uh. I know that doesn’t mean anything to you. My ship? Brand new, a ship like the Oz costs about five thousand grams of T.”

“Tea?”

“Tritium. It’s what most planets use for intergalactic trade. Most planets have their own monetary systems for on-world transactions, but they don’t translate well off-world. Like, I guess on Old Terra, diamonds were super expensive? Then somebody discovered 55 Cancri e. That’s a planet five hundred times the size of Old Terra, made entirely of diamond! Cancrians give their babies diamonds for teething chews. Bottom fell out of the diamond market. Anyway, tritium, that’s rare everywhere, so it’s what gets used for money.”

“And this ship is worth twenty times what yours is worth.”

“Yeah. _Was_ worth, anyway. Now she’s scrap, and Roach put a claim on her, so she’s not even mine any more.”

“What? Why not?”

“Law of salvage. ‘Any vessel abandoned in space is the full and immediate property of the first claimant to mark it for salvage.’”

Loki looked aghast.

“It’s fine. Don’t get upset about it. I knew what would happen when we abandoned ship. Besides, the Oz was busted all to hell and nearly my whole cargo was taken out. It’s not like there was much value left in her.”

Her cargo. What was she going to do for money? She’d spent eight years combing this corner of the galaxy, looking for space junk that could be rendered into components for sale. This was supposed to be her big haul. The T she earned from this outing would sustain her for the next two decades, more if she managed it carefully. All of it, taken out by one stray space rock. The universe was a cruel bastard. Still, it had given her Loki. At least for as long as she had him.

“Why do you call him ‘Roach?’ I have been trying to understand the connection between the name ‘Resurrection Cochrane’ and the nickname.”

She laughed.

“Two reasons, actually. When I was a baby, I couldn’t say his name. I tried, but it came out “Wesuwecshun Cockroash” more often than not. Second, a cockroach, or roach for short, is a particularly nasty type of Terran insect. It’s one of the only things that supposedly still lives on Old Terra today. They’re horrible.”

“You’ve seen one? On Midgard? Old Terra, I mean?”

“No, I’ve never been to that system, actually. When humans spread from that system, they accidentally brought a lot of things with them. The worst two, at least according to every alien species I’ve ever encountered, are roaches and the rhinovirus—that’s the one that causes head colds. Humans adapted to live with that virus a hundred thousand years before they spread to the stars, but when they did, very few of the other alien species they encountered had ever been exposed to it. One guy who landed on the planet Keymalo brought several of the native species to the brink of extinction before they realized it was because he gave them all his cold. Their dominant race was a kind of giant slug-man. Apparently a lot of them drowned in their own mucus. And roaches just live anywhere. You might not see ‘em for a while, but you can’t kill ‘em and you can’t get rid of ‘em permanently. Hence, the other reason I call him ‘Roach.’”  

“I can see the connection between that odious little man and a disgusting insect that appears when you least wish it to. That leads me to another question. When we came on board, there was a group of females in the cargo bay.”

_Oh boy. Here we go. He’s seen one he thinks is hot, and he’s going to tell me he’s going to leave and go after her instead._

“Yeah? What about them?” she asked. She tried to keep her voice neutral. She wouldn’t cry until he left.

“They’re all so tiny. You’re tiny. Roach is tiny. And all the ship's crew as well. When I met you, I thought at first you were a child, or afflicted with some kind of dwarfism. But now I’ve seen a dozen or so humans, and you’re all so...short.”

Kellan breathed a sigh of relief. _Was that all?_

“You’re a frost giant, though. I mean, the name says it all. GIANT. Of course we look small to you.”

“No, Dana. I am tall, it’s true. Though Thor is taller than I am, many of the Asgardians were not. Jotuns, most of them anyway, are much, much taller than I. When I was on Mid— Old Terra, five hundred years ago, I saw many humans who were nearly as tall as I. There was one, one of Thor’s ‘heroic’ friends, named Rogers, who was exactly as tall as I, in fact. Are you suggesting that all humans are now as small as you?”

“Oh. I see what you mean. It’s because we’re spacers. To save energy and resources, it’s generally encouraged that talls should stay on-world, and only shorties like me and Roach go off-world. Smaller people use less oxygen, less food, make less waste to be reclaimed. We’re more efficient. There are tall humans, but most of them never come on ships, unless they’re passengers relocating to a different colony, or doing business on another world or something. Professionals, those like us who work out here? It’s just the best career path for someone as short as us.”

Loki nodded, his fingertips pressed together in thought.

“Do you hate that I’m so little?” she asked quietly. “I mean, I know it’s probably annoying that when you kiss me you have to bend near in half.”

“Not at all,” he said, smiling.

Loki got up from his chair and stood next to the bed.

“Being bigger than you means I can easily do _this_.”

He suddenly grabbed her in his arms, dragging her off the bed. She shrieked in delight as he lifted her high above his head and spun around with her, then brought her down again. He held her at the level of his waist and she wrapped her legs around him. Half-lidded, his eyes had a look she had grown to know and love. Within seconds, her top was stripped off and he was assaulting her breasts with his tongue and lips. He pushed her back against the wall and held her there easily with only one hand and the weight of his body. At first, he tried to strip her pants from her, but when it became frustrating after a few moments, he simply vanished them with magic and buried himself inside her in a single, powerful thrust that made her cry out. He set up a rhythm, fucking her into the wall. One of his hands was under her rump and the other held her arms above her head, pushed to the wall as if she were chained there. He wasn’t being gentle, but she neither needed nor wanted him to.

 

Afterwards, they rested for a while, lying in one another’s arms, and Loki went to the head and brought a small towel back, cleaning her gently. As he tended to her, she looked at him, marveling in how amazing it was that this beautiful, sexy man wanted her. It made sense when they were alone, but now? Roach had a crew of sixteen and a whole contingent of passengers she and Loki had glimpsed in one of the lounges on their way to the stateroom, and yet, he still wanted her? When he had other choices? It was gratifying, and at the same time terrifying. She had learned long ago that people often used one another to get what they wanted, only to abandon them when they no longer needed what the other could provide. This was the reason she tried to engage as little as possible with others. It meant not having family, or close friends, but that was a price worth paying, when the alternative was losing your heart whenever someone you allowed yourself to love betrayed you. She knew that pain all too well.

There was a knock on the door of their stateroom. Loki seemed annoyed, and it made Kellan wonder if he had been considering another round with her, or if he was just generally irritated by being disturbed. He didn’t bother dressing, but opened the door completely anyway. The crewman who had knocked was momentarily fazed by Loki’s naked form before he recovered, clearing his throat.

“Captain Cochrane wants you on the command deck.”

“Very well. Inform him we shall be there when we are able.”

“The Captain was very specific that he wanted you now,” the crewman said very quietly.

From her position in the bed, Kellan could only see the back of Loki’s head, but she imagined he must have made some kind of menacing face, because the crewman suddenly recoiled and took a step back, further into the gangway.

“Or, take your time, uh. Sir,” he said before turning and all but running from their door.

Loki was smirking as he turned around.

“You enjoyed that far too much. It’s like you derive pleasure from scaring the wits out of people!”

“I suppose I do. There was a time, many years ago, when I was angry and foolish, that I would have gutted someone who interrupted me like that. I suppose I’ve grown more...tolerant as I’ve aged.” He pulled on his pants. “What do you think Roach wants of us?”

“Not sure. He knows I’ll pay him for our passage once we get to Tau Ceti and I can get some work, so it can’t be that.” She rose and dressed, pulling on a clean jumpsuit that had been taking up space in one of the Starseeker’s equipment lockers until Cochrane gave it to her. “He won’t leave us guessing, though. One of Roach’s good qualities is that he’s a straight shooter.”

“He...is an accurate marksman?”

“Fuck’s sake, Loki. Didn't they have idioms on Asgard? It means he doesn’t dissemble. He’s open and very straightforward. With friends and business associates, anyway.”

“I see. And you trust him?”

Kellan paused in thought.

“Overall? I trust Roach a little more than I trust most people, which isn’t a shining endorsement, as I don’t trust anyone much. But he’s never really done anything to try to hurt me on purpose, which puts him above a lot of the shifty bastards I’ve known.”

“How long have you known him?”

“My whole life, I guess. He and my Gran used to run together. They’d known each other for ages. She raised me, and he was living on her ship when I was born.”

“Your parents?”

Kellan was silent.

“I’m sorry,” Loki said. “I should not have pried into your personal affairs.”

“No, it’s ok. I just don’t think about it much. It’s been years since anyone asked me about them. My dad died before I was born. About a half year after he got killed in an, uh, a thing he was doing that didn’t go well, this woman my Gran had never seen or heard of showed up with a baby, saying it was my dad’s kid. Gran didn’t believe her at first, but she scanned me and my DNA came back as a match for her son’s paternity. The woman who brought me to her wasn’t the woman who gave birth to me, and she wouldn’t tell Gran my mother’s name.”

“Perhaps now that you are grown, you could find the woman and ask if she knows more. Do you know her name? Or where she went?”

“I had her name, but when I was about six, we got a notice from the NDA—NuTerran Data Archive—that she was dead. The only reason we got notified is that she left me some money in her will. That’s how Gran paid for me to go to school.”

“And your grandmother?”

“She died when I was eleven.”

Kellan tried to keep her voice neutral. She didn’t want to go into this topic too far. Her emotions were already perilously close to the surface. If he asked, she wouldn’t lie, but she didn’t want to talk about the years she’d spent homeless, drifting on and off starships and through various spaceports. She didn’t want to tell him how she had learned, in the hardest ways possible, how vulnerable a young girl was in that kind of situation.

“Ready? We should get up to the comm-deck and find out what Roach wants.”

Without a backwards glance, she left the stateroom and made her way to the ladder that would take her to the command deck. Had she turned, she would have seen that Loki’s face was drawn into a concerned scowl.


	8. Bargains

The Starseeker’s command deck was, without a doubt, the nicest ship’s bridge Kellan had ever been on. Four of Roach’s crew were manning the systems, while the captain himself lounged in the center of the deck, where instead of a captain’s chair or pilot’s rig, he had a couch, padded chairs, and several tables. It looked very much like the reception area in the Maison d'Enfants, a very expensive hotel where Kellan once lived. She tried not to let that make her nervous.

“Sit, you two! You wanna drink?”

Roach’s slurred consonants suggested he had already had a few of his own. They joined him on the couch, but Kellan declined his offer. She only drank when she was alone. She didn’t feel safe drinking with others around. Loki took Roach up on his offer, and the captain dialed some parameters into the replicator that was embedded in the table in front of them. A moment later, a tall, thin glass covered with frost crystals emerged from the machine. The liquid inside was a swirling mixture of blue and silver.

Loki took it and sipped. His face contracted in surprise.

“That’s...actually quite good. What is it?”

“It’s a cocktail called a Floating Frost Giant. I figured, you being Jotun and all, it was kinda appropriate.” Roach laughed at his own cleverness as Loki rolled his eyes. “When you want another, just push that,” Roach said, pointing to a small black button on the front of the replicator. Mine’s a Marvanian Sunrise. Three parts gunpowder-infused tequilla and two parts—”

“Roach, is this discussion of galactic cocktails really germane? Why did you call us up here?”

“Ooooh, sorry Kell. I get carried away when I’m drinkin’. I called you up here because I wanted to offer you a job. The pay’s fantastic. It’s in your skill set. Honestly, you’re really the best person for the job, so I’m glad I found you when I did.”

Kellan narrowed her eyes and leaned back slightly.

“Doing what, exactly?”

“Kell! Why so supsisish, I mean, suspicious? Have I ever steered you wrong?”

“No. But there’s a first time for everything. Besides, when you say things like ‘good pay’ up front, that probably means it’s dangerous, and something I’m not going to want to do. When you say ‘in your skill set,’ I’m fairly sure you’re not talking about wrangling space trash. So, what is it?”

She leaned back and folded her arms. Loki had finished his first drink and pressed the button on the replicator, seemingly fascinated by the technology at work.

“Ok, so you’re right that it’s a little on the...not-quite-above-board side, which is why the pay is high. I wouldn’t say ‘dangerous,’ though. Maybe ‘sensitive,’ or ‘delicate,’ would be more appropriate. And you’re right that you don’t need to haul junk for this one. I want you for your other skills.”

Kellan sighed. 

“I’m done with that shit, Roach. I don’t do it anymore. Haven’t worked a boost since I was sixteen, when I left your crew.”

“Don’t matter, girl. You’re the best. Always been the best I’ve ever seen. Besides, don’t you even want to know what it is? What I’ll pay you for it?”

“Nope.”

Kellan stood and started to leave.

“Wait! Kell! C’mon. Hear me out, for old times’ sake. I just want to lay it out for you. If you’re not interested, walk away, no hard feelings from me. But hear me out?”

“I’ll give you five minutes. Then, I’m going back to my cabin, and I’m going to stay in there until we get to Tau Ceti.”

She sighed and sat back down. Beside her, Loki was fiddling with the replicator, apparently not even paying attention to their conversation.

“The layout is like this. There’s an artifact, pretty old, in a museum. I want it. I’ll pay all your expenses, and half a million T.”

Kellan blinked a few times. 

“Roach, you gotta say that one more time. I misheard you. It sounded like you just said you’d pay half a million grams of Tritium.”

Roach nodded eagerly and sipped his drink.

“What the hell do you want that you’re willing to pay that much for? Anything worth that much won’t be easy to get.”

“Yeah, I know. When I decided I wanted it, I thought to myself ‘the best person to steal this is Kells, but she’s spaced off somewhere and you’ll never see her again.’ Then, I found you. Another thing is...this thing I want, it’s DNA locked.”

“We can’t get it then.”

“It’s actually a species-lock, not a lock keyed to a specific person.”

“What species?”

Roach’s eyes flickered to Loki, who was still experimenting with the replicator. 

“Jotun. It’s supposedly from Jotunheim, before it got annihilated. So, I figured it was serendipity when you showed up, with a Jotun. The universe tryin’ to tell me something.”

“You wish us to steal a relic of Jotunheim?” Loki spoke for the first time since he had started drinking. 

“Uh. Well, I’m not sure. Does that offend you?” Roach asked nervously.

Loki pursed his lips in thought for a moment.

“I suppose it should, but Jotunheim is destroyed. What is this relic you covet?”

“I don’t know what its real name is. At the museum, they call it the Coldbox.”

Loki tilted his head to one side, as if listening.

“Coldbox? I’ve never heard of such a thing. Can you describe it to me?”

“Let me show you!” Roach said eagerly. He grasped an augmentor that was laying on the table near him and punched something into it. The little device shot a beam of white light out from its projector into the air, and a three-dimensional image appeared. It looked like a blue and silver box that glowed from within. “There! Ever seen that before?”

Loki gazed at the box curiously.

“No. I’ve never seen such a thing. Are you certain it’s from Jotunheim?”

“Absolutely.”

“Hmmm. Well, if you’re willing to pay our expenses, I don’t see any reason we shouldn’t go and get it.”

Kellan was stunned. She didn’t expect Loki to be on board with something like this in the first place, and now he wasn’t only not endorsing it, he was volunteering both of them to steal the thing.

“I think we should talk about this before we make any hasty decisions,” she said, catching Loki’s eye.

“Whatever would please you, my dear,” he said. He had a bemused smile on his face that was unlike any expression Kellan had ever seen on him before, and it mildly worried her.

“By all means, talk it over,” Roach said. “We’re sixteen hours out of Tau Ceti still. Can you give me an answer by then?”

“Yeah,” Kellan answered. “The thing is in a museum on Ceti?”

“No, no. I suppose I wasn’t clear. It’s on NuTerra. In the Vault of Sorrows.”

“That’s...Roach, it’s impossible to rob the Vault of Sorrows. Are you crazy? Besides, I’m SS. You  _ know _ I’m SS. I can’t even GO to NuTerra!”

“What is essess?” Loki asked.

“My birthright designation is Stateless Spaceborn.”

Loki took another drink and shook his head in confusion.

“Ok, look. It’s like this. If a child is born on a planet, that is the planet most likely to certify that child’s citizenship. If the child’s parents, or parent, depending on the species, are from a different planet, depending on the laws of that world, the child may also be extended temporary or permanent citizenship from the world or worlds from which their parents came. If the child is born on a ship, station, independent outpost, or some other non-planetary place, other than a sponsored colony, then the parent’s citizenship is generally extended to the child. But sometimes, you get people like me.”

She took a deep breath and bit the inside of her cheek to calm herself down. The pain helped her focus and she got her ears to stop buzzing long enough to continue.

“I was born on a ship in deep space, so I don’t have any planetary citizenship of my own. My mother is unknown, so I don’t have any way to get citizenship through her. My father was also spaceborn, though he had secondary citizenship from Zenn-La, which is where my Gran was from. But spaceborn people can’t pass their secondary citizenship on to their children, meaning I can’t claim Zenn-Lavite citizenship through my father. I’m ‘stateless.’ I don’t have any citizenship on any planet. Now, out here in the sticks, nobody cares. If you’ve got a few T and you’re not a total asshole, you can get around pretty much anywhere on the outer rim. But those core homeworld planets? NuTerra? The Jovian and Saturnine moons? Nobody gets to go there without an interplanetary visa, and you can’t get one if you’re SS. I can’t set foot on any of those worlds without getting arrested for illegal immigration.”

“Kell, you gotta trust me! I’ve got that covered. I have a guy. Real good.”

“C’mon, Roach. Good enough to forge docs that can fool scanners on NuTerra itself? You gotta stop drinking that shit, it’s rotting your brain.”

Roach merely laughed.

“No, I swear. He’s good. Listen, kid. You two go talk it over. When we get to TC you can tell me your decision. If you want to see a sample of my guy’s docs, I’ve got a crewman whose paper he worked on. His papers say he’s Skrullian, and since they shapeshift, nobody questions why he looks like a Badoon. They just figure he’s a Skrullian in morph.”

“You’ve got a Badoon working on this ship?” Kellan asked, looking around in alarm.

“Relax, he’s harmless. Had his scent glands removed a century ago. Nobody is getting gassed, and he’s a great mechanic. Stays in the engine room almost all the time. You’ll never see him.”

Kellan relaxed a tiny bit.

“Fine. We’ll talk it over and tell you what we think about your boost job. Loki, let’s go.”

She had started to walk back to the stateroom when she heard a crash behind her. Whipping around, she saw Loki sprawled on the floor.

“Supernova hellfire, what happened? Why’d you fall down?”

Loki looked at his hands as if they belonged to someone else, turning them over and over before he raised his face and looked at her.

“It appears...that I am intoxicated.”

 

With the help of three strong crewmen, Kellan got Loki back to their room. She was back on the bed; he was on the floor. She had tried to get him into the bed as well, but he claimed it was moving and he needed to lie on the floor, which was still moving, but moving less. 

“How, in the Allfather’s name, did I become drunk?” he asked.

“What do you mean? You drank, like, seven or eight of those Jotunmeisters or whatever they were called.”

“Floating Frost Giants! Like me. I’m a frost giant, and now I’m floating,” he giggled. “It’s almost impossible for me to get drunk, though. I eventually just stopped drinking on Asgard, because even Asgardian firewine, which is so strong a half-cask of it would knock Thor sideways, didn’t even get me tipsy. What is in that drink that it made me this...inebriated?”

“I should have warned you about synthetic alcohol. I forget you haven’t been around here for more than a few weeks. Synthol probably wasn’t invented when you were awake last. In fact, I know it wasn’t. It was only invented about three hundred years ago. It takes a measure of your DNA when you press the “order” button, and it gives you a beverage specifically formulated to make you drunk. It doesn’t have the negative effects on the body that natural alcohol does, though, like hangovers and liver damage.”

“Oh dear. And I drank...so many,” he laughed again.

“Can we talk about Roach’s crazy idea to steal this coldbox thing?”

“Certainly, darling.”

“Why the hell would you agree to steal it for Roach?”

“I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did. You said we’d go get it for him.”

“No, I said ‘if you’re willing to pay our expenses, I don’t see any reason we shouldn’t go and get it.’ I never said I’d give it to  _ him _ .”

“Loki! You can’t make a deal and then double cross someone!”

“Yes, yes. But what was it you said? It doesn’t count as stealing if you steal something back from whomever stole it from you?”

“Are you saying it’s yours? I thought you didn’t recognize that thing, though.”

“I lied. I know _exactly_ what it is. The Casket of Ancient Winters is mine, and I shall have it.”


	9. The real me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE NOTE: TW
> 
> Ok folks, this chapter was hard to write, but I felt it was necessary. It took me about seven tries to get it right. 
> 
> Though I have not done any TWs so far in this story, this chapter has some major shit, and needs one. It's all Kellan's backstory, and there is child rape and self-harm/attempted suicide. It's not described in nauseating detail (I hope) but she does really lay it all out for Loki, and it's awful. 
> 
> There is a tiny bit of plot at the beginning of the chapter, which you can read even if you want to avoid the worst stuff. I put the following before it gets really bad:
> 
> **** TW-see note at chapter header ****
> 
> Take care of yourself. You are special, and you are loved.

Sometime in the night Loki sobered enough to return to the bed, and Kellan woke with his long, lean form curled around her.  One arm was draped over her body and along her thigh, his face pressed into her hair. She could feel his breath on the back of her neck, cool and steady. Kellan extricated herself from his embrace as carefully as possible, trying not to wake him, but Loki was an extremely light sleeper. He yawned and stretched as he opened his eyes.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

Loki sat up and rubbed his face with the heels of both hands before answering.

“I believe I am fine,” he said. “I feel much less ill than I think I should after being so greatly intoxicated, but that is probably due to what you told me last night about synthetic alcohol not having the same negative effects as natural substances.”

“Yes,” she said. “Unless you’re allergic, like me. When I drink synthetic wine I always get a headache.”

“Then why drink it?”

Kellan gave a non-commital shrug in lieu of an answer.

“It seems like you remember what we talked about last night. Does that mean you remember saying that you wanted to go get this Casket of Ancient Winters thing, but not give it to Roach?”

“I do remember that,” he said. “And I also remember that you were utterly adorable while arguing vociferously that cheating Roach would be a bad idea, and I said you would change your mind in the morning.”

Kellan snorted and rolled her eyes. “There's no 'morning' in space, and I haven’t changed my opinion,” she said. “Roach is annoying, but he’s not a bad guy and I would feel terrible about double crossing him.”

“But you didn’t feel terrible about stealing a spaceship from him?”

“That’s different! The ship was my gran’s. She had it for years. Long before I was born. It was our home. Then, she lost it in a bet with Roach, but I don’t think it was really fair. When she lost the Oz, we had to go live on an outpost. If we hadn’t lost our ship...everything would have been different. Even when she died. It wouldn’t...I wouldn’t have...”

Kellan lapsed into a silence so long that Loki got out of bed and moved to her, taking her into his arms. She was shaking, and a tear rolled down her cheek. It was the first time Loki had ever seen her cry, and she tried to suppress it. _Great,_ she thought. _Now he’s gonna think I’m weak._

“Tell me,” Loki whispered. He kissed the top of her head and drew her back to the bed. He climbed in and pulled her body close. As if the feeling of his arms holding her had flipped a switch that toggled her emotions from off to on, she sagged against his chest and cried until she could speak again. Kellan had never felt more safe than she did in Loki’s arms.

“Gran was a stim addict. Mostly soñando. You know that stuff? No, nevermind. Of course you don’t. It’s a drug that makes people hallucinate. It’s classified as an entheogen, so it’s legal in some places if your religion is registered as one that allows it. My gran converted to Somnutarianism just so she could get her hands on it all the time. But even legal, it still costs a lot of T. She did a lot of stuff to be able to pay for it. She worked boost jobs with Roach when I was little. I’m sure there was other stuff she didn’t let me find out about. She gambled away most of what we salvaged, trying to make it into a big score so she wouldn’t run out of T for soñando. That’s how she lost the Oz, and that’s why I was so angry about it. Roach knew she was high. He knew she couldn’t see straight when she was like that, but he let her bet the ship anyway. That’s why I don’t think it’s fair.”

“What happened after she lost the ship? You said you had to go to live on an outpost? What is an outpost?”

“It’s a big space station that’s independent of a planetary system. No planets or moons around, just a bunch of metal floating in space with people in it. The one we lived on is called Brichloch 7. We were there for about six months. Then, Gran got a job, a legit one, on Tau Ceti, and we moved there. That’s when I went to school for a while. She hadn’t gotten into my money, the money I got from my mother’s friend who brought me to gran as a baby. All that time she was jonesing, and she never touched it. It costs a lot to go to school, you see. It was great for a while, until she started using a lot again. One day, I came home and the door to our compartment was busted in. Gran was...well, she was dead. Somebody she owed came for a payout, and she couldn’t pay, so they beat her until she…”

Kellan swallowed and took a few gulping breaths.

“I didn’t have enough money for rent, so I got thrown out at the end of the lease we had on that compartment. I lived on the street. I kept going to school for a while, but eventually the instructors figured out I didn’t have anyone and I was homeless, so they barred me from the school, and—”

“They what? Why?” Loki’s voice was full of shock and anger.

“Rules. If you don’t have an account, there isn’t anywhere to bill. If they don’t get paid, you’re out. I guess technically I was paid up for a little more school, but eventually they would have had to bill me again, and then I wouldn’t have been able to pay. They did me a favor, actually. If you get prosecuted for theft of services, like going to school and not paying, you go to prison.”

“Surely they wouldn’t put a child in prison!”

Kellan looked up at him.

“Why not?”

“Children can’t be expected to...they’re _children_. They can’t have jobs. How could they pay for things?”

“I got my first job when I was five. Gran and Roach used to work boosts, and they paid me to strip down hot product. Burn off the serial numbers with an acetylene torch, or change them to make them look like a number that wasn’t reported as stolen—that kind of thing. When I was about seven, Roach taught me to bypass electronic locks and basic security systems and it turned out I had a knack for it. After a few years, I was one of the best boosthackers in this quadrant.”

“I...don’t really know what to say. When I was a child, I had a very, very different life.”

“Well, aren’t you a prince? It figures you would have an easier time of it than a street kid. Right?”

“I suppose I never thought about it. Asgard isn’t immune to social issues. We had hungry and poor citizens. But for the most part, it was a temporary situation, due to a crop blight or something manageable. Frigga would organize relief efforts and Odin would pay for it out of the royal treasury, and in time, people recovered. To live without a home, without an education, for as long as you did… I am afraid I can’t even imagine it. What happened after your Grandmother died? You went to live with Roach?”

“No. Not for a while. He and Gran got in a fight after she lost the Oz to him, so he took off before she died. When I didn’t have anywhere to live any more, I slept on the streets, like I said.”

She lapsed into another silence, which stretched on uncomfortably. The next part, that was what would make him hate her. If she told him, he would know she was filth.

“What happened next, darling?” he asked. Loki was stroking her hair and she relented with a sigh.

 _I have to tell him. He will leave, but he should know what kind of monster I am._  
  
“Eventually, I got picked up by...a proc. You know what that is?”

“I am afraid not.”

“A proc is a person who... they find people who…” Her voice shook and she faltered. “If I tell you this, you’re going to hate me. I’ve done awful things.”

Loki turned her around by her shoulders and looked into her face. She tried to keep the fear and desperation out of her expression, but from the look he gave her, she was fairly certain she had failed to do so.

“Dana, my darling. I once tried to conquer the Earth and my actions killed nearly a hundred of your kind. I betrayed my brother’s trust when he most needed me to stand beside him. I destroyed most of Jotunheim, slaughtering thousands of my own people. I masqueraded as my father and ruled Asgard—quite poorly, if I’m being completely honest—because I let myself get too complacent instead of paying studious attention to the needs of the Aesir. I also… When the svartelves attacked Asgard, I told one of their warriors how to get to… to a room where... Odin was in the palace that day and I wanted to hurt him, because I was angry. I thought they would kill him, but instead, they...they killed my mother.”

Loki closed his eyes and swallowed heavily. Kellan stroked his cheek and he opened his eyes again, grasping her hand in his. Bringing it to his mouth, he planted a soft kiss on her fingers.

“My point is that I have done things so atrocious I’m sure anything you did pales in comparison. I want to know you. Tell me, please. What is a ‘proc’ and what did they do to you?”

  
**** TW-see note at chapter header ****  
  
“A proc is a procurer. Procs find people who are desperate, or who don’t have any way to defend themselves. There are always plenty of people who need to make some T and will do anything for it, and a few who are just really vulnerable. Sometimes, a proc finds someone they consider to be ‘special goods.’ That’s what I was. It’s not unusual for kids to be on the streets, but it is pretty uncommon for one to also have no living family and to be SS. If you’re spaceborn, you don’t even have the right to call the constabulary in most cases. You’re treated more like an object than a person. So a proc found me when I was eleven years old and sleeping under a stairwell in a factory. Her name was Elmyra. She sold my virginity to some ship’s captain from Flivok-6. He kept me for a month and raped me pretty much the whole time. He was hopped up on sex stims, so it was five or six times a day. Then, he gave me back to her and she gave him another little girl. Next, she took me to this place she owned called the Maison d’Enfants. In some Old Terran language that means “House of Children.” Clients, usually men, but women too sometimes, come there and buy one of the kids for an hour at a time. They kept us fed, but we couldn’t leave, and we couldn’t go to school. We weren’t even allowed to wear clothes unless that was a fetish the client wanted. We just had to line up, naked, and let them ‘inspect’ us. One would come in, look up and down the row of kids, maybe poke at us with their fingers a little bit to see if we had...whatever it was they wanted. Then, they’d pick one, or sometimes a couple of us, and take us upstairs for sex.”

Loki’s arms clenched around her. She wasn’t sure if he was angry with her, or just shocked, but she was surprised he hadn’t pushed her away in disgust. The last time she had tried to share part of her story with someone, a lover, that is exactly what he had done.

“I don’t remember a lot from that time. I started drinking then. It made it easier. The clients would come in and...use me...but I couldn’t feel much if I was drunk enough, and most of them didn’t care, unless they wanted something special. One day, about three years into this, a client dropped a knife off his belt when he was taking his pants off, and he didn’t notice. When he left, he didn’t take it. I waited until I didn’t have a client and then I…”

She pushed up her sleeves to show the long scars on the inside of both arms that ran from wrist to elbow, paler than the flesh it was sunken into, like a jagged white river flowing through a valley of despair.

“I cut my arms open. It was really hard. The first time, I only scratched myself. That’s these light scars here. They call them ‘hesitation marks.’ The second time, I pressed a lot harder and cut through all the way. Doing the other side with my non-dominant hand was a lot more difficult, but I did it. I passed out after I lost a lot of blood. When Elmyra found me, I guess she just dumped me, or more likely had one of her goons do it. I never found out what happened while I was unconscious. I woke up in a medi-tower, and it turned out some lady was out shopping and she saw them dump me in between some buildings. She called the constabulary and they took me to the doctors, who stitched me back together. I didn’t have anywhere to go, so one of the docs let me come back to his compartment. He wanted...well, I’m sure you can guess. He kept me there. His name was Harvey. I know it sounds bad, but he fed me, and he didn’t whore me out to other people, and he didn’t hurt me, so it was a lot better than d’Enfant. I worked up the courage to tell him I wanted to leave about a year later and he just kissed me goodbye, gave me an account ID with a couple thousand T on it, and let me go.”

“I was looking for some kind of work when I heard somebody needed a boosthacker for a job. I did that job, then got in with their crew for a few more boosts, and Roach heard I was back on the scene, so he took me into his crew. I was fifteen then, and I stayed until I was eighteen, almost nineteen.

“Then one night, Roach and I got into a fight about something he wanted to boost. I thought it was too dangerous, he thought it was the perfect score. I couldn’t take it anymore, so I wrote him a note that said I was taking the Oz back, because he should never have taken her from Gran in the first place, and I needed the ship more than he did anyway. I flew her out and started taking contracts for junk hauling, and I did that for sixteen years. And I met you.”

During her recitation, his arms had continued to cradle her, flexing every time she mentioned something awful.

 _Now it comes,_ she thought. The words of her last lover, with whom she had shared only a fraction of the details she’d just given Loki, flitted through her mind. Eben had said “You’re a disgusting whore,” and had beaten her to within an inch of her life before stealing all her credits and leaving. _A year with someone. You think you’re in love, and then...that._

“My darling, I don’t even know what I should say.”

“You probably think I’m disgusting. I know. I’m a whore. I’m dirty and...I’ve been with so many...I didn’t want to, but, I really couldn’t stop them, I swear. You’re only the fourth guy I’ve ever been with voluntarily.”

Kellan began to cry again, and she tried to stop herself. _Men hate it when you cry. It just makes them mad._

“I do not think you are disgusting. They are.”

His voice was frighteningly aggressive and Kellan looked up at him. He realized he was scaring her so he softened his gaze.

“Don’t worry, my love. I won’t hurt you, nor will I allow anyone to ever hurt you again. None of what happened to you was your fault. You relied on adults to protect you, because you were a child. That is the natural order of things. Instead, they hurt you. Even your grandmother, who put you constantly into danger with her actions.”  
  
She recoiled a bit at his words.

“Gran _loved_ me.”

“She may have, but that does not mean she was a good parent. Odin...I have blamed him for a millennium now for hurting me and for not treating me as I believed I should have been treated. I still believe he did much wrong in my upbringing, but in comparison to those who had charge of _you_ as a child, he was a good father to me. And Frigga was an excellent mother, always. You deserve better than you have been given. Much, much better.”

“You...you don’t hate me?”

“My darling, no. Look at me.”

She raised her eyes to his once more.

“You are wonderful. None of the torture you endured was your fault. You are none of those things you said. You are not disgusting. You are not dirty. You are certainly not a whore.”

Loki held her for a long time, stroking her back and neck gently. It wasn’t sexual, only comforting, and she was glad for it.

“Does Roach know any of your story?”

“Pieces. Not the whole story. I’ve never actually told anyone all of that before. I haven’t even said parts of it out loud.”

“I am honored that you chose to share this pain with me. I wish I could take it away from you.”

“It was a long time ago. I can’t ever go back and make it not happen, but I don’t dwell on it either. It was a part of my life, and it was awful, and it is over. I’ll never be in that kind of situation again. I’d never let myself. I’d k— I mean. I would never let it happen again.”

He knew what she had not said. The same thing he had repeated to himself, over and over, as Thanos had boarded their ship and slaughtered the Aesir who dared to stand against him. “I will kill myself before I allow him to hurt me again.”

“The display screen said we would be in Tau Ceti docking station in three hours. Why not get a little more sleep. I will hold you and protect you, and I will wake you when we arrive. Hmm?”

“I...thank you, Loki.”

He dimmed the cabin lights and scooted down on the bed, still holding her. She thought she might just relax, but soon after she laid her head on his chest, she was consumed by sleep.


End file.
